The Wolf that Kissed the Rose
by KaiserKou
Summary: When the Gods spoke to Robb Stark his whole world changed. Forsake Honour. Winter is coming, and the cold knows no mercy. And as darkness gathered around him and those closest to him turned on him he would have only one light in his life left. AU from Robb's coronation and onwards. (ABANDONED/UNFINISHED - in the process of a reboot)
1. The King in the North

**The Wolf that kissed the Rose**

Book One – The Wolf, the Rose and the Lion

Chapter One – The King in the North

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

"The proper course is clear!" T'was Lord Bracken standing there, 'fore the council of lords, talking a whole bunch of bollocks about whose banners they should kneel to in the South. Didn't matter none. Robb's father was dead, and it took all he had not to fill his mind with thoughts of only vengeance and nothing more. "Pledge our loyalties to king Renly and move south – to join our forces with his!"

Should have expected that from Bracken, who had been the closest of the Riverlords to the Targaryen dragon. Robb seemed to recall that Aegon Bittersteel's mother had been a Bracken, too. Barba Bracken, whose hill lay just north of the keep he and his men had taken and now occupied from the Lannisters after the Whispering Woods. Jonos Bracken even prayed in a sept before the Seven-Pointed star, like Robb's mother. And he was wrong in much, as much as he was wrong in his loyalties.

"Renly is not the king". As one all the bickering lords shut their gobs and turned their heads. Even the Lady Maege Mormont who lead the men of Bear Island and Lords Glover and Robin Flint who lead the vanguard of his armies. All of them listened now. Robb had proven himself worthy of listening to, and his blood had ruled the North for eight thousand years if the stories were to be trusted. They listened to him then, too. Bracken in particular looked confused.

"You cannot mean to hold to Joffery, my lord" Bracken protested as he approached him, and he was lucky that Robb ruled his temper with an iron fist lest he'd jump out of his seat and smack him about like the drunkard he was. Baratheon of King's Landing and the Lannisters – thick as thieves they were, and rotten the lot of 'em. "He put your father to death!" And so he had. Joffery would see, when the Wolfshead banner flew above Maegor's Holdfast. He'd know then that the North remembered.

"That doesn't make Renly king" Robb told him straight, lifting his voice to address the rest of the crowd of gathered Northern lords and Riverlords, the leaders and commanders of his army crowded into the great hall of a desolated keep on the edge of the Whispering Wood while the city of tents that was their army at rest lay camped outside. "He's Robert's youngest brother. If Bran can't be Lord of Winterfell before me, Renly can't be king before Stannis".

"Do you mean to declare us for Stannis?" Bracken wondered, and Robb bit down on his answer. His father had taught him to honour his allegiances, and lord Eddard Stark had readily bent the knee before House Baratheon out of friendship and the marriage between Lyanna and Robert that never was. But at the same time he knew that Stannis was a stern man, ill-loved and stoic, and rumours said that he had taken a red priestess from across the sea to his court, a woman who held his favour, a red witch who called for the burning of all gods but her own.

Some of the Northern lords kept close counsel with the Old Gods. They remembered the stories of how the Andals had burnt and hacked down the Weirwoods of the South. If Robb declared us for Stannis they'd sooner turn their swords on him than on the Lannisters.

"Renly is not right!" shouted Lord Tytos Blackwood from aside, by one table there sitting with the lady Mormont at his side. At his insistence the crowd burst into bickering, the same as before, some arguing loudly enough that Robb feared that they would draw their swords and go on to draw blood. "If we put ourselves behind Stannis-"

"My lords" the Greatjon stood from his seat, Jon Umber of the Shackled Giant of his house, his booming voice breaking at the bickering around him. "My lords!" he shouted, and ushered silence as he strode about, looking out over the crowd. "Here is what I say to these two kings-" he spat onto the ground, and Robb found himself frowning. The Greatjon had been his strongest supporter ever since Grey Wind had bitten two of his fingers off. He was odd like that, understanding only force, but Robb had inspired his respect, and he'd follow him until the end of his days. Robb wondered where he was going with that. "Renly Baratheon is nothing to me!" he went as the lords cheered at his spitting. "Nor Stannis neither!"

"Hear hear!" shouted Bowen Bole from aside some of the other lords of the Wolfswood, Gregor Forrester and Darren Woods chief amongst them. Most others kept their mouths shut as the Greatjon kept on talking.

"Why should they rule over me and mine, from some flowery seat in the South?" he asked, and though Robb knew that he was right his words… he feared the implications even as the majority of him was aghast and numb and enraged all at once by the ill deeds of the mad boy king who had put his father to death. "What do they know of the Wall, or the Wolfswood?! Even their Gods are wrong!" All but a few of the Northern lords laughed at that, the lady Mormont laughing the hardest. The Riverlords and Robb's mother did not laugh, except for Tytos Blackwood. Robb wondered if Mother would ever smile again.

"Why shouldn't we rule ourselves again?" the Greatjon asked the crowd, his voice lowered, a smile on his face and a straightness in his back that Robb had only seen in him the time he was about to draw his sword on him. "It was the dragons we bowed to" he put his hand to the blade at his hip "and now the Dragons are dead!" With a metallic scraping he pulled his ancestral sword from its sheath and turned to point the tip of it at Robb. "There sits the only king I mean to bend my knee to-"

In that moment time seemed to stop for him. As the Greatjon sank down to one knee Robb remembered his father and all his oaths of loyalty to Robert Baratheon. Robb had heard the stories about the man, the great warrior and fierce fighter who had always done right. He had seen him, too – a fat prick almost too heavy for his horse, surrounded by Lannisters and Lannister guards. Had that fat drunkard been his king? He felt my mother's eyes on the back of his neck as the Greatjon knelt before him.

"The King in the North!"

Greatjon looked at him, and Robb knew that he believed in him. He believed in the freedom of the North and the ancient legacy of House Stark, the kings of Winter, Wardens of the North, the Shield that guarded the realms of the First Men. And moreover he believed in Robb.

A shiver ran down his back, and at Jon Umber's words he stood tall before the commanders of his army, his eyes as dark as the midwinter nights above Winterfell. He did not know if he was about to reject the crown he was offered or if he was to accept it, but he never had the chance to do either of it right then. "I'll have peace on those terms!" Lord Blackwood proclaimed proudly from aside as Umber's sworn men bowed along with the Greatjon. "They can keep their red castle, and their iron chair too!" the Lord Glover too drew his sword and knelt before him where he stood along with Lord Blackwood. "The king in the North!"

From behind Glover and Umber, two houses who had been so long at war with each other, rose Theon Greyjoy from his bench, his grey eyes fixed on Robb's. "Am I your brother" he asked of him, not even a quiver to his voice "now and always?"

"Now and always" Robb told him truly, and so he knelt beside the lord Umber, drawing his sword to lay it at his feet.

"My sword is yours, in victory and defeat" he swore to Robb, in the ways of the liegemen of the old Kingdom of Isles and Rivers that had burned when Aegon Targaryen first cast down Harren the Black. "From this day until my last day".

And when the Greatjon boomed out again "The King in the North!" his call was picked up by all the others in the chamber, and one by one or en masse the lord of the North knelt before Robb while the Riverlords who had followed his mother's blood into battle where quick to do the same. His mother stared at his back as his lords swore their loyalties, their only loyalty, to him. Again and again they shouted it, until the keep and all the world seemed to ring with the sound of their oath and even spread to the camp of his army beyond them.

There he was, young and bold, the brave Robb Stark. "The King in the North!"

A couple of hours later he was panicking.

"Oh, pissing blimey!" He cursed as he stood before his mirror image in the polished bronze surface on the washing stand in his chambers, a small dreary room in the top of the small keep that they had taken residence in after they had driven the Lannister men holding it afield. He looked back at that boy that he saw in the mirror. Could hardly even grow a proper beard. How in the name of all the Gods was he supposed to lead his people as king? "Oh, bugger, bugger, bugger! Shite! What the bloody fuck am I to do now?" he asked the eyes watching behind him. Silence was his only return.

Grey Wind didn't answer with anything more than a stare, looking back at him from where he rested with his growing head laid across his paws. He had grown big, that Direwolf pup, almost a pup no longer. He had killed men when fighting the Lannisters, too. Mauled them too death, more rabid bear than wolf in those moments. Now, after the feast that had followed Robb's impromptu coronation, during which the shouting and the raucous drinking had almost gotten out of hand more than once, he seemed nothing but a furry presence of comfort in Robb's own chambers.

He was more than that, and more than a fighter and a pet as well. He was the Direwolf, the grey figure in white against the banners of House Stark, he was the personal seal on Robb's shield where his grey fur and yellow eyes howled death onto his foes. He was of the North, in a way more than Robb was or would ever be. He was his family. Not the now living ones, but the souls of his ancestors, staring out of –

The heart tree. Yes, perhaps in the godswood he'd find some answers. They'd make for Riverrun in a day's time, and then they'd be on towards war. Thinking of his father – a lance of anger went through him at the mere thought – he took his sword, the one he hadn't ruined trying to kill a tree in his grief for his father, and headed down and out. Grey Wind rose with an audible sigh as he padded after him. _Oh well_ , the Direwolf seemed to say.

It was odd, Robb reflected as he snuck down the stairs of the keep. Sometimes it was as if he understood what Grey Wind was thinking, what he was feeling, tasted blood on his tongue that wasn't his own when he and the beast charged into battle together. Sometimes it was as if the wolf warned him of enemies attacking out of sight or against his back, like eyes in the back of his neck. He knew not what this strange bond was, or how much of it he was imagining, but it had saved his life a dozen times already and won him the loyalty of Greatjon Umber and much of the North and so he wasn't about to look a gift horse too closely on the teeth. He might find the teeth rotted through, after all, and the bond sinister and cold down to the core. But it would have to wait until afterwards.

Afterwards. After the war. He had no idea of what that would be, now. As he walked past the sleeping or stupidly drunken sentries by the dreary tower's exit – making a mental note to speak with the keeper of the watch to ensure that at least some soldiers remained sober even through celebration and revelry – he found himself to be one of the only few awake in the camp outside it. It made it easy for him and his wolf to walk past the tents unnoticed and unaccosted, though on the distance he could still hear some men cheering. "King in the North!" they toasted in between the bouts of drunken singing, and Robb's lips tensed and his jaw clenched shut hard to grind his teeth together at the proclamations.

The godswood of that Riverland keep, half-ruined and fallen far out of favour with the local lords despite its proximity to Riverrun, was a shoddy thing, its grass grown over the paved paths past the high and thin stone wall surrounding it. A few trees stood there, oaks and pines and a single goldenheart tree around the edges of the garden – a garden more than it was a wood, in truth – but it had a Weirwood heart tree at the centre of it, standing on a raised dais of stone and moss a few steps high. The face carved into its white bark was cheerful, frozen in a bout of perpetual laughter, its eyes still seeping bloody sap that was yet dry despite the long years of its watch. A sign of the Gods' presence, perhaps?

Robb sat down on one of the tree's jutting and bulging roots, thick and worn by many an arse he noted with a shade of a smile passing over his lips, and pulled his blade softly from his scabbard as not to let the steel ring out into the night and wake anyone. He set to sharpening, cleaning and polishing it, and slowly drifted off into thought as Grey Wind padded about the garden before settling in the moonlight shadow of the heart tree.

He had wondered why his father had done that. Eddard Stark – Ned, as his friends and his wife had called him – had often done as Robb did now, retreating back to the godswood of Winterfell and seating himself at the foot of the heart tree with the stern face. Always when he had executed a man, sometimes when he merely needed to think. But now Robb understood. It was calming, tending to such a monotonous and familiar task in such a peaceful setting, placed there in the wild and familiar presence of the Gods. Doing it he felt a little like he was back home, at Winterfell. Doing it made him feel a little closer to his father.

 _The blood of the First Men flows in the veins of the Starks_ , his father had used to say. _The Starks keep to the Old Ways of the Kings of Winter_. The Old Ways, Robb wondered quietly as he ran his whetstone down the edge of his sword. The old ways? What were they? He'd doubtlessly have to rule by them if he was truly made King in the North.

 _The man that passes the sentence should swing the sword_. His wasn't a new sword, not by any stretch of the word, but it had hardly seen any use before it came into his hand. It was a pretty yet sturdy thing, and he had taken it from the body of a Lannister commander in a skirmish sometime before the battle of the Camps. He still couldn't remember if it had been him or Grey Wind that had killed the man. The blade itself was simple, straight and true and with a broad taper and narrow tip to better punch through chainmail and armour, yet the crossguard was gaudy and hideous, gilded and set with rubies at the wings and the pommel, and the handle had been wrapped in red leather decorated with gold lions. He had torn that off and replaced with a simple brown wrap that lay better in the hand, but the crossguard he still hadn't done anything about. It was still the same gaudy gold from the Westerlands.

The Westerlands. Already Robb had beaten the Lannisters at the Battle of the Camps and the Whispering Woods, and all but a few saw the Battle of the Green Fork as anything but a victory. Now he'd be on towards the West, keeping a token force harrying Tywin's forces in the Riverlands so that the old lion could not leave Harrenhal unattended while Robb marched on Lannisport. He wasn't dumb enough to think that he could lay siege to Casterly Rock as was, not with the rest of the war to fight. It would waste too many of his men. But if Lannisport fell…

If Lannisport fell the lords of the Westerlands would perhaps see that the mighty Tywin had no power left to defend them. They'd rout, forsake his family to stand on its own as Tywin had made few friends over the years and was powerless without the fear and respect of his banners, and so the resistance around King's Landing would falter and lessen. Robb could take the city then, with as much tactics as martial prowess, and when the city fell the garrison of the Red Keep would no doubt throw open their gates and deliver the boy king to Stark justice, and-

Wishful thinking, no doubt. Things rarely went as easy as that. Battle had taught him that particular lesson. But he'd kill all of them, and get justice for his father and set his sisters free from captivity. Then Joffery – that ingrate, that blonde inbred little shit – would die, and he'd be free. His people would be free.

He wondered what Edmure Tully and the rest of the Riverlords would do in response to the Northeners crowning him king, the ones not there at the camps but still under Lannister siege at Riverrun, but he doubted that it would lead to open hostilities. And, after all, he had a knack for war. He had discovered that quickly. In some ways it wasn't the thoughts of Kingship and the war that drove him to the godswood to sit and think before the Gods. It was the fear of what came after.

Afterwards… he knew how to rule a kingdom. He had been his father's first son and heir, and so he knew the practicalities of rule, at least for the North. But theory was one thing and practice another. The books told you to do something but never how it was to experience doing it. He'd have to levy taxes, establish an independent mint – that was what Southron kings did –, build and maintain a navy, see to it that Glover and Umber didn't start feuding once again, see that Forrester and Whitehill put aside their squabbles, that the Skagosi were well and truly subjugated, establish a bodyguard in the style of the Kingsguard – a Wolfguard? – and father heirs and get married-

At those thoughts and what they implied he slanted his whetstone off the blade and ran his palm down the edge. Just a hair, but it did cut him, and as he dropped his sword and seized his hand with a curse he saw a small trickle of blood slowly escape a hair-thin cut now in his palm. He muttered another choice oath and made to stand fetch some bandages, but almost slipped on the uneven dais and thus both his hands fell on the heart tree's bark to hold him upright. And as his cut hand landed on the space just beneath the eyes of the Weirwood tree, beneath the face of the God, the blood of the tree, still fresh and dripping, mingled with his.

And pain shot through him.

 _"Old gods or new, it makes no matter, no man is so accursed as the kinslayer". Pain, in his shoulder, a slash, a clawing demon thing, a poisoned bolt fired from a crossbow._

 _"The Lannisters send their regards". A stab, through the gut, a slash of pain across the neck, blood all over, blood everywhere._

 _"I will trade your boy's life for Robb's. A son for a son!" Claws down his face, wolves butchered, ash of burning heart trees on the air, a greatsword melted down and cannibalised, brothers lied to and dead and gone._

 _"The North remembers". A stab through the heart, blood on the Needle, House Stark forgotten._

 _And then silence, until the end of time. Silence._

Silence.

Lying prone on the ground before the heart tree Robb panted, chest heaving, the aftershock of the pains running through him. His vision swam, stars dancing black before his eyes, but through it all he saw Grey Wind standing staring at him, concerned but not helping. The thing that did this… it was the Direwolf's master, too. That was what he could tell Grey Wind was thinking.

"Gods" Robb gasped, forcing himself to roll over onto his stomach. Everything hurt, even his eyes. Especially his eyes. "Gods!" he tried to stand, but the world spun around him, and his stomach heaved until he could do nothing but brace himself on his hands and evacuate everything in his gut onto the ground before him in a bout of violent sickness. His britches felt wet – had the cramps made him piss himself? His heart was beating faster than it ever had before and he was as hard as a rock all over, every muscle rippling in agony as if they wanted to tear themselves from his bones. "Gods!"

He looked up, forcing himself onto his knees, and his eyes met those of the Weirwood's. In them there was a light, shining like the moon over glaciers. A terrible, awesome light, and from the mouth of the madly laughing God: a whisper in his mind, a voice like gnarled roots twisting and ice breaking, of mountains splitting apart and the world being torn asunder.

 _Forsake honour. Forsake righteousness. Forsake kindness. Winter is coming, little king. And the cold knows no mercy._

"Gods" Robb whispered into the silence that rung in his ears after the pain had left his body. And, in truth, the silence was perfect but for that. Not a wind moved, not a bird sang, not a blade of grass whisked as he climbed onto his feet and nearly fell over. He had to brace himself against the heart tree's white trunk, but nothing happened. The visions had passed. On the distant breeze he heard, half a world away, the hatching cries of infant Dragons.

The Gods had spoken.

It could have been nothing but the Gods speaking to him by way of the heart tree.

If this was what it was like to be a prophet he never wanted to be one ever again. But as his hands slid over the smooth white surface of the heart tree no more sights came to him. No more agonies, no more flashes of pain and screaming of voices so distant. Now, past the ringing in his ears, there was only that far-off and off-key singing on the wind. It was _the Night that Ended_ , the song his Northerners sang. And they cheered again and again, a new cheer past every verse. "The King in the North!" They'd put their trust in him. The lords of the North and the Riverlands and the Smallfolk, too. His family, his sisters and brothers. Even the gods, now. They all counted on him.

And then, in a flash, the fear from before escaped the young king. This, he had discovered, was as it should have been. The gods had spoken to him.

This was his destiny.

"Come along, Grey Wind" Robb said to his Direwolf after he had straightened out the garden after him and cleaned up the sick to make sure that he didn't dishonour the Gods – Gods he knew for certain were real now – and retrieved his sword, the one with the Lannister crossguard. He'd have to have it changed soon, but not now.

Now, when all the doubts had been burned away by a godssent agony, it was time to act.

His lords and commanders found him before dawn the next day – or later that night, as Robb had not slept even an instant through all those dark hours – in the great hall, a gathering of scrolls before him all sealed with grey wax sigils bearing the imprint of the Direwolf and spread out far over the surface of the table he was standing over. It was Greatjon Umber that came first, looking for his son and heir Smalljon, who despite his name was too a giant of a man in the spitting image of his father and was passed out on top of the back of the otherwise incredibly dignified Robett Glover.

"Your Grace!" Greatjon boomed and approached the king, stepping over unconscious men and women as he went, avoiding to tread on all other lords with great care but gleefully kicking his own men in the sides to wake them up. "You're up bloody early" he commented as he stopped and looked down over the map alongside the Young Wolf. "What's bothering you?"

"This war, and the future of my House" Robb Stark confessed and turned towards the Lord Umber, and Greatjon scowled at the sight of him. His hair was ruffled, his shirt and britches clean and new yet still somehow hanging off him, and his face was pale and splotched with large bruises, his eyes shot with tendrils of red in the millions. "Don't mind me, Lord Umber. I was drunk and went to pray in the godswood last night. Must've fallen over and down a rocky slope… or nine".

"Aye, you look like absolute shite, your grace" Greatjon chuckled, satisfied with the explanation as he moved to stand beside his new and uncrowned king, looking out over the rough semblance of Westeros. "So" the Lord of Last Hearth went slowly, softly "I might've been drunken and glad after the battle yesterday, but I regret nothing, your Grace. I should've run it by you first, not just sprung it on you like that, but it had been burning in my mind ever since I, uh, carved your meat for you, and-"

"We've been servants of southron lords for far too long, Greatjon" Robb interrupted him, and at that the Lord Umber gave a large and bloodthirsty grin, hearing the certainty in his liege's voice. "They'll answer for my father's death. All of them will. I will have my sisters back, I will have justice, and we'll all have freedom. What you say to that, Lord Umber?"

"I'd say that you'll have us Umbers with you every step of the way, and our bannermen too, King Stark" the Greatjon grinned even broader and licked his lips. "So what's keeping you up – besides the bruises and the restlessness?"

"Besides my thoughts of vengeance?" _And the words of the Gods?_ "I've thought on it long and hard, and I need someone I can trust beyond all reproach to do… something. Someone who can be my King's Hand and perform for me a charge more important than any battle". The Gods had told him to forsake honour, the cornerstone of his father's legacy, and though he would not betray either his father's or his own morality he had come to understand the voices to be right during his long wake. He needed to forsake kindness if he was to win this war. He would hate it, but he needed to use the men at his command like pieces upon a board.

He would need to play at the southron Game of Thrones.

"Lord Umber, you were the first to call me king, and you are the most loyal to my House" Robb took the much larger man by the shoulders and stared him true. "I must trust you with a secret mission. You are the only man for this. If you'd do it-"

"Aye" Greatjon nodded without question, and Robb nodded back at him. If he had had the strength in him to smile he would have done so. For now, a nod would have to do. "What is your command, your grace?"

"After my coronation in a sevennight you'll take a hundred and fifty men and ride to the North, as far as North goes" he instructed as he turned back to the table and pulled from there four scrolls – three for his brothers' sake, one for Maester Luwin – and handed them to Greatjon before taking them back. He would have to rewrite them. "Then you must ride like the winds of Winter, and let no man bar your way". As he went on to explain in hushed tones the hall began to fill with other Northern chiefs and Riverlords, shaking and slapping their sleeping comrades awake. And soon even the lady dowager herself, the widow Stark, lady Catelyn, rose from her reprieve to find in the lowest chamber of the keep her son, Smalljon Umber and Dacey Mormont helping him put on his heavy plate armour.

"Mother" Robb greeted the woman who had birthed him levelly, almost coolly, despite the way she flinched when she saw his bruised and battered appearance. Smalljon Umber, bearded and fierce, gave his newly minted king a look after having secured the last strap of his breastplate, and Robb nodded and jerked his head, to which he and the heiress of House Mormont left the two alone and dragged with them the few remaining in the hall. It was half an hour past dawn, and Riverrun was half a day's march away.

"What on earth happened last night?" Mother stalked up to his side and lifted her hand to touch his face, but Robb flinched away and held still her wrist. He didn't want her – or anyone else for that matter – to touch his skin. He was still feverish from the visions, and the bruises left behind by the cramps where his muscles had all but been ripped apart were still fresh and forming.

"I went to the godswood and tripped in the dark. But now I see clearly" he told her, winching inside as he knew how she would react when she came to know what he had just done. Or what he had ordered Greatjon to do. _Gods, Mother, forgive me_. "And last night… they crowned me, Mother. The crown's just a formality at this point. The whole army cheered it to the stars, and soon the smallfolk will know too. Even if I could turn away from it, I wouldn't".

"Are you sure about this, Robb?" she implored him strongly, seeking chinks and cracks in his armour. "Surely it's not too late to back away from this madness. There are still Baratheons out there with honour – like Stannis and Renly. You could-"

"I wouldn't. Lord Umber was right. Blackwood, Glover, Mormont, Umber, even Bolton and the Reed boys, even Bracken and the Vances – they all knelt to me. The Seven Kingdoms lived by the Dragons, and the Dragons are gone".

"What about the realm, Robb? What about what your father fought and bled for?" How could he make his mother understand? How could she ever understand? She was southron through and through, despite having borne five northern children, and she clove close to the Seven. She knew not, nor would she ever know, the whispers of the Gods. She heard not their voices in the godswood. She would never see the visions or believe in the Greenseers and the Skinchangers. All stories to her. He knew now, for certain. Could he trust a heathen? _Winter is coming, and the cold knows no mercy_.

"The realm is dead. The Lannisters saw to half of that murder, and by the Gods I'll see to the rest of it". He wondered what the Gods had meant. Did they want him to honour his father but dishonour his memory? "My father fought for Baratheon. Robert Baratheon. Did you name me after him? I only ever saw a fat drunkard who couldn't dismount his own bloody horse without help". He turned away from her and faced the map. "Robb… Robb. It's too short. Not a good name for a king. Needs a royal style, doesn't it? If I am to be crowned I'll need it longer, and with titles".

"Already thinking of that, are you?" Catelyn knew her son – or at least, she had known the boy that he had been before the war began. She had never known him to be so good at killing, but she had always known that he was gregarious and practical both. It was his brother, Jon, who had been the sullen and quiet one, prone to anger and passions at times but otherwise always hanging close to Robb's side, drawn in by heir of Winterfell's charisma. But Robb had grown so brooding and serious now. He didn't even hear her when she asked him, staring at the far wall as he was, muttering half to himself and half to her.

"Cregard, Bennard, Rickard… Eddard. Robard's an old name in the North. A First Men name. Robard Cerwyn comes to mind. It sounds" he drifted off in the middle of his sentence, leaving his mother to fill the void for him, but she did no such thing. "There's a sense of thing carrying on, as they always have, in that. Of continuity". He paused, and when he spoke again he spoke slowly, as if tasting and leaning on every single word. "Robbard Stark, the first of his name. King in the North". His eyes fell on the map again, bloodshot and strained, and a shiver ran down his back. "King in the fucking North".

"Never did I think I'd see this day" she told him honestly, and though her heart ached no tears came to her eyes. Though she had cried herself to sleep the night before, as the lord of the North lifted her son up on their shoulders and called him King, now it was as if she had no tears left. "Robb, if this is what you seek to do I will stand by you. A mother supports her son. As long as you get my little girls back to me-" she fell silent when Robb turned back to her, the cold of the North in his blue Tully eyes, brighter than they had ever been before. Blue, deep, and colder than the heart of winter.

"I will have my sisters back. I will have my vengeance on the Lannisters and House Baratheon of King's Landing" he assured her, laying one hand on the pommel of his sword. "No kindness, no mercy. I will bar no means to win this war – no matter what you or Father would say".

And with that he paced on by her, a new darkness in him apparent before her eyes. As the army made to march she lingered behind in that ruined hall for a little longer, quietly praying for his soul.

Seven days later, in the Godswood of Riverrun and the shadow of the heart tree there, a slender thing with a laughing merry face, Robb was crowned in the presence of the gods in the manner of the First Men.

He was kneeling before the heart tree, eyes fixed on the laughing face carved into its bark, as all his lords and oathsworn men stood behind him. He wondered faintly what it was with all the grinning faces in the trees this far south. Were the Gods somehow happier here, where the forests were brighter and the grass grew greener and the wheat grew taller?

Up in the North, in Winterfell and the Wolfswood, the faces were stern, sneering or staring or even baring narrow wooden teeth in anger. Had the Gods all been laughing and smiling once, long ago, but when the Andals came and cut down the trees the ones in the North had turned bitter and enraged? Then why was this one smiling? Was it because he was here, now, a wolf of the Starks come to bring the Andals justice?

 _Fool thoughts, lad_. There was just as much Andal blood in him as there was in any man in the North, the result of thousands of years of intermarriage with the Andal strangers from the south. And the faces were carved. They didn't change. They didn't feel or think. They were just trees.

They didn't show any visions. And yet… His mind was hurting with the implications, a burning ache just behind his eyes. The bruises had faded, his eyes had stopped hurting, but the questions remained. If the Gods were real, beyond all doubts real, how much power did they have?

And how many more of the darkest myths of yesteryear were truths?

He cast the thoughts from his head and focused on the voices around him. The First Men had crowned their kings by the grace of his men, not by the Gods or whoever claimed to speak for them like the southorns did. No one man or woman could speak for the Gods of the Weirwoods, even the ones whom they had showed… something to. Flashes of pain and snippets of screams merely. A warning, no doubt about it, but of what? "I raise this man to the kingship of his fathers" Roose Bolton's voice had been in there, in the visions too, so familiar to what they were now as he repeated the same words said by all the rest of them as they passed around his crown. From hand to hand that bronze and iron circlet went, passed from each to the next as they all said the words. A mere formality now, truly, as was the crowning. But if it was such, why was Robb's hands shaking around the grip of his sword?

Smalljon had named it Lionslayer, once the crossbar and pommel of rubies and gold had been replaced with grey iron and bronze and the grip had been remade out of a piece of Weirwood, white and run through with red. All of it was made in the south but was of the North, like the crown made for him by his uncle's blacksmiths and greensmiths. Like Robb himself, he could not help but think. It was no secret that he was stocky and brawny and red of hair and blue of eye like a Tully. Almost no Stark at all in his features. But none of the lords before him spoke that aloud as they took his newly forged crown in their hands before they passed it along. He had proven himself to them. He had proven to be his father's son.

So why did the Gods want him to dishonour his father's legacy? _Forsake righteousness_. Why? But he had felt the agony that would follow if he clung too hard to notions of honour. _The cold knows no mercy_. He had felt the dagger in his gut, the quarrels in his body, the sword that cut his head from his neck. No more honour. And, as was, Roose Bolton's family knew more about a lack of honour and kindness than any other House alive on the face of the world. He'd have to keep the Lord of the Dreadfort close. Perhaps the man could teach him ruthlessness. And if the man thought to betray him, or if Robb had to act against him, Bolton would only be a sword's length away.

For now he was loyal. For now they all were. But he had felt the steel cut his flesh, and he had heard the name Lannister. His enemies would not rise above sending assassins and poison to do the work of men, or to try and turn his people against him with promises of gold and titles. They hadn't shied from such means in the past. He needed to prepare.

If he was the King in the North he needed to prepare.

"By my love for his father I raise him to the kingship of his ancestors" Rickard Karstark took the crown last, as a distant kinsman to Robb's family, and his armour creaked as he approached the kneeling young man with the circlet in hand. If Robb's lady Mother had followed the Gods of the land and the woods and the rivers she would have been the one to place the crown on his head, but his mother's presence would wait until the septons of the Riverlands and the Riverlords crowned him a second time, in the light of the Seven. A necessary formality. The Gods knew that his heart was with them and not with the Seven of the South. They had looked into his heart when he had looked into theirs. Or so he liked to think.

"From ice, from iron, from stone, from earth" Rickard Karstark droned. "We, of the Barrowlands, of the Rills and the Stony Shore, of the Bay of Ice and Bear Island, of the Mountains and the Hills, of Skagos and the Bay of Seals, of the Last River, the Weeping Water, the Broken Branch and the White Knife, of Saltspear and the Neck and Cape Kraken, of the Wolfswood and Long Lake; we children of the North raise you to your kingship, Stark of Winterfell".

And so the crown fell on Robb's head, placed there by his kinsman, and Rickard Karstark stepped back to the rest of the crowd to watch in reverence as Robb stood, sword still in hand. The Lord of Karhold drew in a mighty breath before he declared to the world. "Gods, bear witness to the rising of Robbard, son of Eddard, Lord of Winterfell, the get of Torrhen, King of Winter! Children, bear witness to the rising of Robbard, king of the First Men! Men of the North, bear witness to the rising of Robbard! The King in the North!"

For a little while he merely stood there and let their shouts wash over him. King in the North, the King of Winter and the Trident, High Chief of the First Men and the Sword of the North. The King in the North. _The King in the North_.

"The North remembers!" Robb shouted and raised Lionslayer to the heavens as the lords cheered his name, and on that day, the day of his crowning, the gods bore witness to his vow.

He would remember. He would never allow himself to forget.

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N** :

I want it noted, first and foremost, that I'm drawing inspiration on a sort of half-and-half of canon. Some events (Bitterbridge) will be like they are in the books, while characters and other events are more from the television series (the happenings in the chapter just past).

Logic is as follows: Robb sees vision in the tree, Robb grows in one stroke trustless and fanatical both. Being thus he does not take his mother's counsel as close as he otherwise would have, and grows determined to free his people and his House from the "southron yoke", as it were. This pushes the Lady Catelyn to the periphery of the politics of the new court, something that will have disastrous consequences.

I've always wondered what Robb's crowning looked like. It's a moment never mentioned in the books. One moment it's "King in the North!" and the next its two months later and he's wearing the damn thing on his head. I hope no one objects to the crowning scene. It always made sense to me, the Northerners being such an independent lot, that their king would be raised by his vassals.

And the Royal style… well, did you know that before Henry V was king he was called Hal? And his dad was born under the name Harry? Kings take new names when crowning themselves in history. Yeah, it's stupid, but hey, whatever works, right?

You want to know the interesting thing? I'm going with the whole concept of faulty prophesies, like GRRM does with Dany and Bran. So expect Robb to be mistaken about his visions, and to make the wrong conclusions and never ask himself the right questions. Namely: was it really the Old Gods that spoke to him through the tree? Or was it something else?

So, haven't really decided on who's love interest Jon will be. So if you guys have ideas I'd be glad to hear them. Only three requirements: female, red hair, bow and arrow. Boy's got more than a type, after all. He's got _issues_.

Hope you enjoyed. Chapter 2 will be out soon.

Ta.


	2. That Maid so Fair

Chapter Two - That Maid so Fair

* * *

 ** _Roose_**

Robbard was a stupid name. A fool's name for a fool boy, a royal style that was largely inconsequential. But at least it was better than "Robb".

Roose's men had started making very bad puns out it. The Lannisters were being _Robbed_ of all their men. That they would _Robb_ the Westerlands and Tywin Lannister of all its wealth. They even called his personal guard _Robbers_. Robbard was still a fool's name, but now that insipid idiocy would stop, at long last. And if it did not… Well, perhaps a few of the men could disappear into his dungeon.

They would howl then, but no one would hear their stories. The puns would be cleansed from Roose's ears. And they would know that his blades were sharp.

A few days after the septon of House Tully had drippled oil onto the Stark boy's brow and said some bollocks about the seven – honestly, did the fools think that the gods of the world were merciful?– and the Riverlords had bent their knees before him and sworn themselves to House Stark, from this day until the end of days, the Young Wolf was in his warroom in Riverrun with Smalljon and Maege Mormont and Brynden the Blackfish and many of his other commanders.

Now, again as he often seemed to be, he was poised over a map of the Riverlands as he was quickly losing his patience. And so was Roose Bolton.

"Your Grace!" Edmure Tully protested fiercely, seeming so small standing beside the armoured Northmen in the livery of his House. Roose wondered if the man was a screamer, a weeper or a breather. After all, a man could be only one of those three things under a flaying blade, though he could turn from one to the other during the flaying itself. "You cannot mean to be honest in this! You are letting the Lannister scum have free reign of your realm! They will march on us like the wind and attack like-"

"Spare me the allegories, uncle" Robb raised his hand and ushered his silence. "Don't you see? We want the Lion to think us tired and weak. We want him to think himself strong, our victories accidents of chance. We want him to be overconfident". Robb's finger pointed to the Whispering Wood, and the lords and ladies around him muttered and nodded, remembering how he had defeated a numerically superior foe with nothing but the vengeance in his heart and the wit of his mind. "Just like here. We draw them in, bait them, nibble at their ankles. When they roar, as lions always do, we cower back, let them chase after us. Let them think us beaten. And then we put them right in the way of our traps. Surround them, box them in, right where we want them".

"You're a clever one, boy" Brynden Blackfish, the black sheep of House Tully, noted from aside, and Robb shrugged. He was uncomfortable with taking praise out of turn. He would learn. He had learned much already. Still there was much he needed to know. This council was one summoned in haste, after all, and he showed himself prickly and weak and tired. A new army was gathering in the Westerlands, and there were enemies fast approaching him from both sides.

"Oi, Riverlord" Smalljon rumbled from beside the newly crowned king. "It's 'your Grace'". Robb shot him a long look, at which the poorly named son of Greatjon Umber faltered and got a pensive look to him. "In'nit? I mean, that what all the southrons do, right? Stand on all the formality?"

"Is this a Southron crown on me head, Smalljon?" Robb asked back, to which the scion of House Umber grinned just like his father would have. It truly wasn't, no crown of gold or precious metals. It was a northern crown, a crown of war and Winter. "I know this is hard, for all of you" Robb looked then to all of them, Edmure and the Riverlords in particular. "But glory will not win this war. Swords and soldiers and shrewdness will. We will fight on our terms, where we will. And Tywin Lannister will be sent whimpering back to Casterly Rock before the year is out". He looked then to the Lord Karstark. "I know this will be hard, for you in particular. But you have my word that your sons will be avenged. Kill as many Lannisters as you'd like in the field, or in their homes. Put their heads on spikes and make necklaces out of their ears if you'd like. Remember: the Kingslayer is mine to torment. My sisters are dead otherwise".

"Understood, your Grace" Karstak grumbled and scratched at his beard, placated at least somewhat by his new king's assurances. From aside in the group Roose Bolton nodded slowly, approving of this new attitude. He liked this change in this newly crowned young man. That bronze crown had changed him, and for the better by much in Roose's mind. Perhaps he would see his House wealthier under the Wolf's rule at least, if not kings in the North themselves when he went to his death in battle as he inevitably would. First Roose would have to make quick work of Ramsey if that was how it meant. That boy did not have the temperament for kingship. Too eager, and much too mad.

Foolish youths, all of them. But now there was at least a little Ramsey in the King in the North, and Roose approved of that. Oh, if he had only a daughter. He could have married the girl to the Direwolf. T'was better to tie oneself close to the highest power so that one could usurp it when one's plans came to fruition than to merely trail on his coattails. But time would tell. That much Roose knew.

Time would tell. Until it did all Roose could do was to keep his blades sharp.

"Where is the Ironborn boy?" he spoke up when there was a silence in the talk around the table, and the Umber and Glover and Karstark men and the Mormont women looked at him darkly before they reluctantly nodded. All of them, excepting Karstark of course, had been kings in the North before the andals came and there could be only one king there to fight them. But the Red Kings of House Bolton had lasted the longest. None other kept so hard to their freedom from the Starks, before or since. And Roose remembered that once his ancestors had made cloaks out of the skins of the Starks. The men, not the Direwolves. All that fur would do nothing but itch. Human skin made for good handle-wraps and took good to holding off rain and dampness.

Just because Harlon Stark had forbidden flaying didn't mean that Roose's kin had stopped doing it. Oh, how he had worked in the dungeons in the Dreadfort on slavers and murderers. _The man that passes the sentence should swing the sword_ – but swords were half measures. The sword ended the man, certainly it did, but the flaying knife put the fear of the Gods in the hearts of those who would follow in his footsteps. And that way it could take time instead of being over in a single chop. He had seen some men last days after losing their skin. Roose found that it gave them time to reflect on their life's poorer choices.

"I sent Theon to the Iron Islands, Lord Bolton" the Stark boy informed him, and Roose bent his head in acknowledgement, understanding at once. The others, though, were horrendously thick as most Mormonts and Glovers and Karstarks often were, and so the Wolf pup had to explain it to them. "I will swear to secure the freedom of the Isles if they join us against the Lannisters. We all know how much they have longed to reave at the Westerlands again after the Dragons died out". Roose did remember that clearly. Eddard Stark had ridden out for that Southron pretender Robert and sailed to Wyk and Pyke and all those other silly things the Iron Islands were named. Pathetic, really.

There had been much to respect in Eddard Stark. He had understood strength and callousness and when to use them both to great effect. But he had a bleeding heart, soft and womanish like all the others. His love for his Southron lord and his precious honour. Roose had made a silent toast to himself when he found out that the man had lost his head because of his precious honour.

And that was why Roose followed the Old Gods, personally. _Gentle Mother, font of mercy_? Ludicrous. The Gods were cruel and capricious, and a man lived best and longest if he were cruel as well. In a world of treachery and deceit fear was the only thing that kept a man alive.

Most fools didn't understand that.

"What is this?" And speaking of, there was the trout who thought she was a wolf bitch, standing in the doorway to the warroom. Roose would have answered something snarky at her, inwardly sighing at Catelyn Tully's foolish presence, but when he saw the paper in the woman's hand he realised that the boy had sent a message. "Robb, what is this?" Her voice was shrill, her face pale and cold, her hand clutching the scroll so hard that it was a wonder that her dainty fingers didn't break. Oh, how some people wore their emotion and their hearts plain for the world to see. _Fools_.

"I forgot to clean my desk. Damn it" the King muttered and reached up to rub his eyes. Still red and strained. He had done that often of late. Were the stresses of command getting to the Young Wolf? If so Roose would have to make contingency plans. Perhaps the Freys would be open to negotiation, and through them the Lannisters and that child of incest on the Iron Throne. "It's a message I've rewritten a dozen time these last few days, Mother" the Stark boy answered his mother. "I didn't want you to see it".

"Why?" the Tully woman accused, all but snarling as she stepped up towards him, her brother and uncle and some of the other commanders making to leave. Roose stayed. He wouldn't miss this for the world. Life's simple pleasures, really. "So that you could dishonour me again? You did this without even asking me, Robb. How could you? I am your Mother!"

"And he is my brother!" Robb shouted back, a rare thing for the Young Wolf to do outside of battle, and all left in the chamber jumped or flinched at it. Except for Roose. Roose was fighting a smile. "What did you think I was going to do, mother?" he asked, tearing the bronze and iron circlet from his head and holding it hard in his hand, the blades of the tiny pointed swords that lined it prickling blood from his palm. "Did you think that I would pass this damned thing to Bran if I died? To Rickon? They are boys, Mother, born in the summer. And Winter is Coming. He's different, mother. More like me. He can even be of use".

"'Of use'? Are you hearing yourself, Robb?" She stepped in close to him and slapped the parchment against the front of his tunic. "That is why you did this? You, my oldest son. You have hurt me more with this than your father ever did. You have all but torn the clothes from my back and forced me to walk naked through the streets. A walk of shame in all but deed. How could you?"

"He can be of use to me, Mother" the Stark boy answered her weakly and quietly, like how a drunk peasant might apologise to his wife when he found that his cock could not be made to stand. "We need him. For the lives of the fifty men I trade for him… they are a small price to pay". Excuses, excuses – if she had been Roose's mother he'd tell her to know her place and leave him to his work. "I know this hurts you, but honour won't win this war. He understands that. Mother, I need you to collect yourself. If the reports of Stafford Lannister gathering another Westerland army are true I need you to go south to Renly Baratheon and-"

"Do this for you?" she wondered back at him weakly, a hitch in her voice and tears streaming down her cheek. "I love you, Robb. Gods know that I have no choice in the matter. But I will do no such thing for you. Not for what you did yesterday by sending the Greatjon North with this". She stepped away from him, letting the parchment fall crumpled and broken to the floor, her shoulders trembling. "I need to tend to my father. I need to take care of my family" she muttered quietly as she headed for the far door of the room. "Family is all I have left".

The Stark boy stared after her once she was gone, his face contorting in an incomprehensible mass of emotions both ordered and not, shame and sadness and anger and a boy's smallness before an angry parent all mixing together. "Out" he said sharply and turned towards the table and the maps once again, and by his tone no one of his loyal lords and bannermen dared to disobey. Luckily it was for him then, from a certain point of view, that the Boltons had risen in revolt against the Starks almost a dozen times since they had first bent the knee.

"Might I suggest, my king, that you place the Kingslayer under heavier guard, guards that you can trust?" Roose told the young king, and slowly his face turned and all semblance of tears went out of his eyes. He lingered behind, for he was not afraid of the Stark boy. A pup thinking himself a fully grown wolf, all baying and no biting. "Your lady mother will take matters in her own hands after this. You must be careful that she does not decide to break him free on her own and trade what little advantage we have over the Lannisters out of… misplaced maternity".

"Aye, Bolton" the Stark boy breathed out hard and set his teeth together. "There is sense in that. You" he noted, his eyes coming alight with intellect and planning. Good. He was using what little brains he had now. "You have little stake in getting Lannister gold, do you? And you are no friend of my mother's. Half the guards around the Kingslayer will be yours from now on. We double his wardens". Half Bolton guards and half Tully ones, one half watching the other just as much as they watched their prisoner? _Clever boy_.

"Good" Roose nodded to him and went to stand opposite him, looking over the map with the boy. He had to admit that he didn't have the same head for strategy that the Young Wolf seemed to possess, but he had lived through the Usurpation and fought in wars and knew enough to know that the situation as it was seemed dire and precarious. "One army rising in the Westerlands, another camped at Harrenhall. If we are not careful, my king, we will be caught like a fish in a crab's pincer, and snipped in half before we are eaten. And we still need someone to go treat with the other kings".

"I know that, Bolton" the Stark Boy seemed to breathe out hard through his teeth as he considered many plans and tactics and discarded almost all of them instantly. "Bolton – you and Glover will stay in Riverrun with the Umber men under Greatjon's daughter Rowra. She commands the riders from Last Hearth, but her father has kept her from fighting. She needs to be bloodied. You will fortify the lands and make the traps. Tytos Blackwood and Maege Mormont will be the hounds" he set his finger to the map and pointed hard to the Golden Tooth and the Westerlands. "They will harry the Lannister army, soften them up, lure them towards your traps. Rickard Karstark will march half the army east, to Harrenhal. If he wants to avenge himself on Lannisters he can take it up with the Old Lion himself".

 _Clever boy_. Dealing with his rebellious kinsman by sending him right at the target he wanted to end the most. Callous, but effective. Karstark was, after all, the only one who could beyond all doubt be counted on to not sway before gilded Lannister hands filled with coin. "My king, there is still the matter of treating with the Baratheons. Stannis is beyond the reach of words, but Renly could still be open to negotiation". He almost wanted to go deal with the young stag himself. Not that he was an effective negotiator – quite the opposite – and he doubted that he would have the desired effect, but he wondered if the gentle weather of the Reach softened the skin of men and women. Perhaps they would even feel like silk.

"I was going to send my mother" the Stark boy all but whispered before he set his teeth again and nodded to himself. "I will be the one to go. It is doubtful that Renly would listen to anyone but me myself with any attention. If I take a small band, two or three dozen, on fast horses, we should make it to Bitterbridge and Renly's camp inside of ten days. What do you say, Bolton?" he looked to Roose, affixing him with eyes containing a shade of winter. "Can you hold the Riverlands for a month while I am gone south?"

Interesting. Roose bent his head in a slight bow. "Of course, my king" he told the Stark boy. "I am forever loyal".

 _Until it is no longer advantageous for me to be so, you clever little boy._

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

Bitterbridge was not far from the Riverlands. Riding hard and stopping only to rest their horses Robb and his chosen band of companions made it there inside of nine days.

The journey had been hard. They had furled up their banners and hid their colours from the world as they went, affecting imitations of southern accents with varying convincingness, covered their Wolfshead shields and sung no songs, Robb had even left his Frey squires behind, and perhaps because of that the nights had been sullen and quiet at first, with none of the joking and horseplay Robb had come to expect from his men by then. So he took up training, sparring with Smalljon and his Gloverblade, a greatsword that had been in the possession of his family for almost five hundred years. Normal steel, hard forged and tended well, but not Dragonforged Valyrian. Not like Ice.

Ice was the reason Robb began to spar with the greatsword. Owen Norrey had been kind enough to lend him his greatsword for it, a weapon that while dark and brooding did not have the same sick and twisted history as the Gloverblade. Smalljon's sword was called that because the handle and pommel of it had been made out of the bones of a Glover Lord, a Glover Lord who had been eaten by a mad member of House Umber and his remains made into weapons and tools for the Umbers to use.

Robb had started to get the feeling that ending the family feuds between the great Houses of the North was going to be a matter most hard fought. But one battle at a time. First he was going to win his war and learn how to fight with Father's sword. After he had convinced his men that the name Robbard was for declarations, decrees and letters only, of course. It was a mouthful everywhere else.

Greatswords were fool things according to most southron fighters and knights, too big and too heavy to use properly. But at most they were only twice as heavy as ordinary swords, and they did have their uses. Robb had seen what had happened to the Lannister lines of pike at the Whispering Woods when the raging Umbers and Mountain Clansmen, on foot, had slammed into them with their greatswords and long axes. The result had been a slaughter as the Lannisters tried to run but were cut down mercilessly by the Umber berserkers. Apparently long wooden sticks pointed with steel could be shortened and cut away if you had a sword long enough to reach them. And a Valyrian steel greatsword was unique in the world now. Ice belonged to the Starks. It belonged to Robb.

It always made more sense to him to fight alongside a personal guard of noble heirs and lesser lords. Oathsword guards like the Kingsguard were there for you in peacetime, true, but if you charged for the enemy ranks alongside the heirs and children of the men leading the other wings of your army they would never even think to betray you. And in doing this he fostered loyalty with the next generation of his subjects and bannermen. There were great risks, true, but they were outweighed by the benefits. And… it felt good having friends at his back, not just sworn men.

Even more so now when they called him king. He made a rule on the first day of their travels: no member of his personal guard had to kneel or bow unless they wanted to. On the second day he changed it so that none of them were allowed to kneel at all unless he asked them to. It was getting tedious and it was slowing them down.

Despite the fresh bruises on his arms and chest from his sparring with Owen and Smalljon and the constant minor delays they made it to Bitterbridge at midday the tenth day of their journey. Around that far source of the river Mander, carving through the flatlands of the upper Reach, a city of tents had sprung up like mushrooms grown of death. A hundred thousand armed men in the bright colours of the Reach and the Stormlands. When Robb rode into their camp with his men behind him, their banners unfurled and their shields now bare to the world, many of the footmen rose and looked on him and his band in awe. Robb hardly saw them. He looked instead to the banners of the camp.

He knew… Bulwer, a southron House that had married into the Starks just after Torrhen Stark, the King who Knelt, had died. And there was the High Grey Tower of House Hightower and the Fox of House Florent – did these Reachmen have no imagination? They were short and scampering men, it seemed to him, slender and fair and all too soft. Was this what the long summer had done to the South, or had it always been like this? Over all other banners flew the rampant Crowned Stag in black on gold of House Baratheon. They expected him to kneel, to these southern fops? He'd die before he did that.

Most of Renly bannermen and sworn lords had gathered around the centre of the camp. A tourney of some kind was being held, the lists and the horses taken away to leave an open circle on the stomped ground not too far from the squat and crone-like keep of Bitterbridge and the river beyond, and before a stand of wood where the Storm King and a woman Robb could not quite see clearly just yet and his kingsguard in coloured armour, a rainbow standing together, a few fought. From the back of the crowd Robb watched, no one paying any attention to him or his, as a boyish knight with flowing brown hair was cast done by a woman so large and ugly that he suspected that she was partly of giant's blood.

"Or maybe she's just a long lost relation of mine" Smalljon Umber jested from the band behind him, and Robb almost smiled at that. Since his mother's tears and harsh words – _Gods know I have no choice in the matter_ – smiling had been hard fraught. His lips seemed stiff and his sullenness unending, but his eyes hurt most of all. The Gods must have all but blinded him.

"Sound the horn" Robb said back at the Smalljon, and the shaggy man nodded, reaching down to his hip to lift the bull's horn with iron fittings from his side. He blew a long blast from it, a dull and mournful sound, the sound of winter's arrival, and the crowd parted and all eyes turned to Robb as he urged his horse forwards to meet with Renly.

There was a contrast between the great mass of Reachmen and Stormlanders in the crowd and between the men beneath the banner of House Stark. All of the ones sworn to Lord Renly – King Renly – were colourful, in both armour and appearance, their flags flying tall above their finery in all their motley colours banded together under the flower of House Tyrell and the Crowned Stag rampant of House Baratheon of Storm's End. But the Stark guards wore all the same grey, the same heavy armours and thick furs and leather baldrics with the same helmets, and rode under the same banners, and as Robb Stark approached the empty circle before Renly Baratheon's upraised stand it was all his men could do but keep from snickering.

"See that?" Smalljon Umber muttered under his helmet the way of Dacey Mormont who rode beside him in the double ranks of the Stark procession, his bright eyes streaking over the knights and lordlings surrounding them. "Fresh as fucking mildew, they are. Green enough to be pissing grass".

"Aye. They're all but planting grass all over their britches before the Wolf" Dacey answered back. None of them were younger than Robb or the two of them, and for all their worth the Northerners had seen battle time and time again, seen more blood spilt than Reachmen and Stormlanders twice their age. "Bloody knights of summer, so they are".

"Hush!" Lucas Blackwood, the second son of Tytos Blackwood of Raventree Hall, muttered from just behind them. "Please! The king's about to meet with the pretender". And so it was that Robb stark raised his hand and had his entire procession halted a mere fifteen feet from Renly Baratheon, whose head was only a little higher on his wooden throne compared to the tall Stark boy on horseback, and as the two kings stared at each other the silence reigned.

In the end it wasn't either of the two who broke the stalemate of stares. "My lord husband" said the woman who rose from beside the seated King Baratheon, a woman so fair that Robb could have sworn his heart skipped a beat when he laid his eyes on her. "Who is this interloper to our melee? We did not expect guests. And why hasn't he announced himself or partaken in-"

Gathering his wits back about him Robb raised his hands from the pommel of his saddle and lifted the helmet off his head to cast out his hair, red and long, behind him to cascade down the shoulders of his armour. His bright eyes all but shone blue like the Others' glare in that gloomy day, and he sat perfectly on in the saddle still when Armstark his horse, nostrils flaring when Grey Wind came in close under him, reared up on his hindquarters and pranced with a terrible whinny.

"Hark!" Smalljon Umber boomed, and all who had thought to speak cowered in silence before his mighty voice. "You stand in the presence of Robbard Stark, the first of his name! The Wolf of the Whispering Wood! Lord of Winterfell, Lord of the Wolfswood, Lord of the Trident, King of Winter! High chief of the First Men! Slayer of lions and unmaker of armies! The King in the North!"

"The King in the North!" the procession behind Robb raised their voices and their banners in a three-fold cheer. "The King in the North!" And none could doubt him there, none could doubt his claim or his lineage as he stood there before the banners of his ancestors. "The King in the North!"

"You asked for me, king Renly, and by my father's love for your family I have come to parley" Robb spoke up before anyone else had a chance to say anything, thus keeping the momentum and the authority his men and his wolf had established for him. "You wanted to talk. Talk we shall".

"Well, then" Renly stood from his throne with a smile, taken aback but still in control of himself, and clapped his hands. "Someone tend to the King's horses! These men are our honoured guests!" And with that he stepped off the podium and led the way towards the Bitterbridge keep of House Caswell, flanked on all sides by the members of his Rainbow Guard. One of them, one in reddish-maroon armour, turned and bowed towards Robb, muttering "The King in the North" under his breath. He seemed familiar. Robb wondered if he had ever seen the man before.

But other thoughts distracted him. Specifically, the woman who walked at Renly's side. She was every inch a queen, walking with a grace that seemed to come as natural to her as drawing breath was for him, and her green and gold and black gown clung to her body in a way that made his heart race. Slender yet shapely all over, her back was bare to him by the cut of her gown yet all but covered with brown hair that curled ever so slightly. Unblemished, fair and breathtaking, she looked back at him over her shoulder and he almost tripped over his own feet.

Her eyes. Round and large, like those of a doe. Shining and bright like stars. Gods, his heart was turning in his chest. He wrested control over his thoughts and all but bared his teeth as she turned back around and linked Renly's arm in hers. By the Gods, he was desiring a married woman while betrothed to another. Had he no honour?

 _Forsake honour_.

Yet somehow he had the sense that the Gods had not meant honour in matters such as these.

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

Margaery knew not what to make of this pretender from the North. No, not pretender. There was an authority to him as he and his men followed her husband and his into the keep of Bitterbridge, a low and squat thing, ugly and flat by the standards of Highgarden but standing tall against the backdrop of the flatlands that surrounded it. A certainty in the young wolf's walk. As bread and salt and wine and food was brought to the tables he followed Margaery and Renly to the high table at one end of the hall, where he would sit at the king and queen's side. On an ordinary seat, no less, to make him know that he was in the presence of his betters and his rightful liege lord.

Or so was the intention of the seating, anyways. No sooner had the chief Northeners climbed the steps to that raised dais before they started handily rearranging things, moving their chairs so that they would sit in a line facing Renly and his most intimate court, their backs against the hall. How unconcerned they were, like all the armies of the Reach and the Stormlands posed no threat to them.

"What do you think of my host, Lord Stark?" Renly asked the northern king, his eyes shining with pride. "A hundred thousand swords come to fight for the Iron Throne. Such is the might of the South".

The young wolf levelled back at him a piercing stare, clearly unimpressed. "They're fresh and untreyned, so they are. Eager to winn glory, with no plaece in real batt-le. They're boys, Bara-thae-oun. They're the knights of Soummer – an' Winter is Comin'". His voice was deep and dark compared to any Southern accent, and the drawl that was in it, rich and far Northern, was thick and distinctive. Margaery estimated that the boy was at least six years younger than Renly, about her age, but he looked and acted and sounded much older. Despite herself his voice sent shivers down her spine as he sat before Renly, showing a flippant lack of respect. That didn't matter to him. He had made it clear that he and Renly were there as equals. "Let's treat, Stag. I've Lannisters to kill".

"Well then, Lord Stark" Renly sat down opposite the King in the North, and at that signal Stark's soldiers took off their helmets and shrugged off their cloaks and shields, leaving their weapons close at hand. "Let's get to it". Margaery watched the Stark men as she sat down beside her husband, with her brother on the far side of him and Brienne of Tarth at their back, and she marvelled at them.

One was a giant. Nothing short of it. Seven feet tall or more he was possessed of a bristling red beard, his hair in long braids down his neck and a greatsword with a handle of Ironwood and yellowed bone – Gods she hoped it wasn't human – he sat down to the Wolf's right, opposite Loras. On his left a tall woman, slender and broad of shoulder, a hammer and an axe at each hip and her dark hair cut short at her neck. Brienne stared at her even as none of the Northerners stared at Brienne. Were warrior women such a common thing in the North that she wasn't even worth noting? Most of the rest of them had features she recognised vaguely, from descriptions and long-lost acquaintances of Olenna Redwyne the Queen of Thornes, but none of them wore any coat of arms or colour except for the Stark grey over their armours.

Brave companions, united as one. It was incredibly romantic, like something from out of the chronicles or the songs of the minstrels.

"This is Dacey Mormont, heiress to Bear Island" Stark jerked his head to his left at the black-haired woman who moved not an inch, impassive and stoic. "And this is Smalljon Umber, heir to Last Hearth" the giant nodded at the King and Loras his champion. "And you're the Knight of Flouers" he looked to Loras. "Heard 'bout you. You escaped with Renly from King's Landin' – hours before my father was cut down like a dog". Oh. So that explained the hostility that had radiated from the Wolf since he first had laid eyes on Renly.

"Eddard Stark was a noble man and a good Hand" Loras replied stiffly, squirming a little in his seat under those eyes of winter blue. "I and my King pleaded with him to flee the city, to come with us. But he stayed in the city, to honour Robert. I have never known a braver or more honourable man. He died a hero".

"He died a trey-tor, slandered by Lannisters. Got 'is head lopped off by 'is ouwn grandfather's sword" Smalljon all but spat at Loras. "All you kneelers and scrapers" that giant scoffed, his red beard thick and bristling like a boar's hide. "That's all youse want for. Like Tytos Blackwood said: youse can keep your Iron Chair. Wolves need no seats like that. They're at their best huntin' an' howlin' to the moon. Free".

"Enough" Robb said levelly, but the unruly giant became silent and calm at once. Absolute obedience, from such bearded and unwashed savages. A paradoxical people, or a ruler who commanded them with a firm hand? "Forgive Smalljon. His mother was a wildling, and she taught him to always speak his mind. You've got terms, King Renly. What are they?"

"They are important, but they will have to wait until after you've broken your fast" Renly inclined his head and seemed to agree with the Wolf even as he raised his hand and beckoned the servants to him. "Wine, and supper. Tonight we dine as kings and brothers!" Stark stared for a second before he inclined his head in approval, and no one but Loras and Margaery saw the tension go out of the Stag King's shoulders.

He kept a good front, smiling and making idle conversation as food was laden onto the tables and wine and ale poured into silver goblets, but Margaery saw the redness that had crept up over his neck and over his back. Like a charge from their famous heavy cavalry the Northeners had ridden all over him and made him lose the high ground. He called for dinning mostly to calm his nerves and try to figure out how to outmanoeuvre this bull-head young man.

Margery looked at him, really looked at him, as she ate in silence with her husband, taking the time to regard each of the Northeners in turn. At other times she would have laughed and joked and flirted to ease the tension, but this was a council of war and most of her grandmother's lessons neither applied nor helped. So she took to doing the one thing she could think of doing: silently watching from the periphery, getting to know her enemy as she ate. The tables were set with swan and goose and fowl, stuffed with roots and vegetables and glazed with honey, finely sculptured cakes and delicacies and all the fruits of the Reach, yet the Northerners took of the hard breads and the meat only, tearing into it like they hadn't eaten in days with all the cultivated manner of starving beasts. Margaery took sparsely though – trying to mind her figure, as her beauty was the sharpest sword in her figurative armoury – eating only lightly of the honeycakes put before her even though she loved them. As she looked to Robb stark her hand, holding one of them, drooped off the side of the table.

The Lord Stark was handsome. Despite her best attempts not to stare at only him, to let her eyes take in and judge each other those wild-haired and dark-eyed Northerners equally, her gaze returned to the Wolf again and again. His hair was dark red, long and shining, gathered at the nape of his neck in a small band whilst he ate, and from in under a few escaped strands his eyes were sitting like fixed pale opals. Winter blue. Never had she known a colour to be truer to its name.

Despite herself her eyes trailed down his shoulders, braced against the ungainly weight of his armour, armour he insisted on wearing along with his weapons even in the peace of their hall. He was broad, brawny, yet the armour was snug and she could tell that not an ounce of fat rested on his bones. All muscle. His hands were bare and callused after he had removed his gauntlets, griping his goblet hard with thick fingers, and she wondered how his touch felt. Renly didn't touch her. A brush across the cheek along with a chaste kiss at the most, perhaps, like when he had bid her goodnight on their wedding night. She knew that he loved her brother more than the light of the sun, and that in another, better world the two would have been wedded to each other better than most couples between members of opposing sexes were.

It was for her brother, in part, that she had married Renly even though it hadn't been her grandmother's first choice. She had – and she was staring at the Stark again. She glanced up, and found those winter eyes looking back at her. _Well, better own to it_. She gave him a smile, and to her surprise and delight he blushed and averted his gaze like a boy. She had known that he was young, sent to war before his time and before that made Lord of the North in his father's absence, but the Young Wolf, shy? Was he a maid? It was almost too precious. The virgin king, fighting to avenge the crimes against his family. Just like out of the ballads if not for–

Something cold touched her hand.

"Eep!" she yelped at first, having let one hand previously holding a honeycake at the edge of the table, and then the pastry was gone, yanked from her grip, followed shortly by something cold, wet and prickly touching her knuckles. Something that moved in a manner most familiar, something that breathed on her, and she looked down to see, under the table and all but propped up against the Stark's chair, that enormous wolf of his, easily the size of a small horse. Despite its massive size and its grey fur and sinisterly intelligent yellow eyes it acted like a lapdog, having crept under the table with all the grace of a stealthy tomcat to steal Margaery's sweetcake, and when he had done so he sniffed her fingers with his enormous muzzle.

At first she sat stock still, as did Renly and Loras, white in the faces with fear, Brienne's hand flying to her sword behind her and the rest of the Rainbow Guard making to rise, but then, after a glance up at her eyes, the Direwolf started licking her fingers. His tongue was huge and raspy, but not uncomfortably so, and it tickled so much that she could help herself but start to giggle. With her free hand, trembling at first, she reached out and touched his ear, the fur soft as silk, and the Direwolf hummed as she stroked behind his ear, making almost pig-like noises of satisfaction.

"'She kicked and wailed, that maid so fair'" the Young Wolf sitting across from her husband hummed, a small smile coming onto his face. "'But he licked the honey from her hair'". Margaery recognized that song, a northern diddy that had spread to the south during the reign of the Targaryen dynasty, and something far less gruesome than the Rains of Castamere that the Lannister lords favoured so. She only saw that small smile though as she looked up to him, and for an instant he seemed not so grim or dangerous or powerful. He seemed like a young man, tired and in need of a rest, blue eyes shot with red. She laughed as Grey Wind pushed his muzzle under her hands pointedly, as if asking for more strokes.

"You look so fierce, don't you?" she spoke in a nasal way onto the beast, as if babying it, before she reached for another honeycake to feed him with, and he took it almost gently from her hand, courteous and kind. "But really you're just a big softy, trying to seem tough. Aren't you just? Big softy!" As all the rest around the table, and some quite far from it too, stared at her she looked up at the Direwolf's master. "He's a delight! What's his name?"

"Grey Wind, your Grace" Stark smiled warmly, regarding the fussing of the big beast as Margaery scratched his big head. "He's killed too many men to fear them, but he's never this friendly. He likes you". Indeed the creature did, Margaery reflected as the Direwolf in question began to happily pant. _This must be the beast that follows the King in the North to battle_. It was odd. The animal might look like a slayer of men, but in reality he was such a sweet and tender soul. "My moouther once said that these wolves arenn-t merely wolves. That they can tell the hearts ouf men and women by scent and sight aloune. That the Gods sent them to my family. The Gods in the high North, the Gods ouf the heart trees and the Children".

"Then they must be at least as magnanimous as the Seven" she smiled back at the Lord Stark, and as they spoke together, she and him and Grey Wind, all the rest of them seemed to fade away, out of her sight and out of her mind. "I've heard that there are no Septs in the North. That on the days of the Gods you dance naked around the Weirwood trees".

"You'd must think ous savages then, your Grace" the Stark king bent his head, and she had to admit that even though the crown seemed to weigh on him more than it ever should have he was every inch the king, even more so than Renly. No, not more so – different. A different sort of king. "Not keepin' with your Gods ouf the Seven. But your Gods're the savage ones ta me, your Grace. Your Gods're the ones with all the ruoles".

Blessed be the Mother, how that deep and drawling musical accent of his sent shivers down her spine. "Oh, believe me, your Grace, when I say that I know that to be truth better than most. I was raised with a whole cackle of septas – I believe that is the appropriate collective noun – telling me what to do and how to sing and what to wear. It was only by the grace of my brothers that I stayed sane". She sipped of her wine again by her free hand and studied the Wolf again, every cut of his face as strong as if fashioned from stone. "But surely there are rules in the North, too. The First men must have had some tenants to follow at the very least".

"There are abhorrences ta ous, your Grace" he smiled – and she liked it. He looked so young, when he smiled, no older than her. He seemed like someone who didn't smile too often. Whom the world didn't allow to smile too often. "Murderers. Rapists. Thieves. Trey-ters. Slavers. Kinslayers. Beyond that and keeping to their oaths, men are free to follow their ouwn ways in the North. As long as they bend the knee to their lieges and as long as their lieges respect their rights, the peace is kept. But if that peace is broken and a man doesnn-t avenge himself, how can he be respected?"

"So as long as they keep the peace and swear fealty, each tends to their own lands and only their own matters?" Margaery smiled in disbelief and took another sip of her wine, and the King in the North inclined his head back at her. "That bodes ill, does it not? How can taxation be levied against such an unruly people? How do you collect your dues?"

"Each lord supplies his ouwn holding and men, or he cannot call himself a lord" said the Stark boy, as they sometimes called him, the Young Wolf, though she didn't see a boy before her but a man, shrewd and tested and hardened by war. "It might not work as well as all you southron folk and your lofty cities, but it keeps us fed".

"Well, hardly that" Margaery jested. "It is like the lot of you have been starved! All of you are lords, yet not a, eherm, large one amongst you. Not even a trace of gut. How is that? The North must truly be less flowering than our lands". Harsh and bitter it must be, truly, to bring about the birth of such hungry wolves. How did these people treat their own? "How about crime? If you break the law, do you have justices meeting out due punishments, or…?"

"The man that passes the sentence should swing the sword" his joy and easy manner slipped from his face a hint, and he spoke that phrase with all the assuredness of a practiced mantra or idiom. "That's the old ways. If you cannot mete out punishment to a man yourself, then did that man truly deserve to be punished in the first place?"

"But what if you have too many men to punish?" Margaery could see that train of logic collapse from miles away. "Or if you are squeamish and sick at the sight of blood but still devoted to justice?"

"If you've too many murderers in your service to end on your own, you've either all too many men, or the wrong sort of men, sworn to you". His words were pointed behind his serious smile and his bright eyes flickered to Renly for an instant before they came back to her. "And as for squeamishness – that's something that doesn't last for long when winter comes. The cold makes men or corpses of all children".

"Can there be such a thing as commanding too many men?" Margaery wondered. All the other lords thought only to spread their wing and take as much glory and land as they pleased and possibly could, all other lords she had met anyway. But in this man there was a fixed goal, an end to ambition. Her Grandmother's lessons had proved true once again. It was as if by merely listening she had seen into the Young Wolf's soul. As she thought on it she stroked Grey Wind's head, the massive head that all but covered her entire lap, and when Robb looked away to be addressed in hushed tones by Smalljon Umber Renly leant in towards her to whisper into her ear. "Yes, lord husband?"

"I can't for the life of me understand more than half the words he says" Renly remarked in words as silent as his breath, and the only one listening in on them was the great Grey wolf, who glanced up at the Stag King and narrowed his yellow eyes in suspicion. "His accent's even thicker than his father's. Do you have to flirt with him so blatantly?"

"All we are doing is trading words, my lord husband" Margaery held back the warmth in her cheeks and smiled to her King. For an instant she thought that maybe he was jealous, but by the look of him she knew that was not so. He was vexed at her speaking so candidly with his enemy – or a perceived enemy at least – and she restrained herself from rolling her eyes. "He is not our enemy, Renly. Stannis is. Make peace with him, I beg of you". She glanced the way of the Young Wolf, and at his smile and the look in his eyes she smiled back at him and was rewarded with another blush. "He's dangerous, this King in the North".

"Do you fancy him?" Renly wondered, and now the blush came freely to her cheeks as she drew back from her husband and stared hard at him. Sometimes he was just as rude and outspoken as his late older brother, and if they had been alone she would have slapped him for his tone. "I know I do. All dominant and cocksure. Traits to look for in a lover, but not in a vassal". He drew back from her and cleared his throat to speak up loud. "Lord Stark" the Northerners fell silent all as one, Smalljon Umber glaring at what he no doubt considered the wrong title. "Your father swore himself to my brother. They fought and loved and ruled, side by side, as brothers. Why cannot we do the same?"

"My father wasn't King in the North, Baratheon" Stark spoke back levelly. "My men placed the Crown of Winter on my head. Remember Torrhen". Margaery recognised that name – Torrhen Stark, the King who Knelt, the last King in the North – but Renly, not all too schooled, did not. "He knelt to Dragons. And you are many things, _Lord_ Baratheon, but you are no dragon".

"Seven Kingdoms, ruled under the command of the Iron Throne" Renly's tone was all steel now, dark and hard and filled with the same stormclouds that seemed to pass over his head. "That is the way it has been for almost three centuries. That is the way it should be!"

"And for eight thousand years before that we in the North ruled ourselves" Stark glowered back. "Your lands are soft. Even your gods are wrong". He looked to Margaery and his eyes softened. "If you would excuse me, your Grace…?"

"Margaery" she told him with a smile despite the darkening mood around them. "Margaery Tyrell". She didn't realise that she hadn't given her husband's family name but her father's until the words had left her lips, but once said she refused to excuse it. Her marriage was a sham, anyway, cold and unconsummated. "Are you leaving, Robbard Stark?"

"Aye, I am. Please, call me Robb" he told her as he stood from his seat, his plate of food half-eaten before him, and all the rest around the table did the same. "You are a Stag only, Renly, playing at being a Dragon. And when stags lock horns their crowns shatter, and all around are wounded equally. You and I will have peace – as long as you stay out of my path. As for the rest" he looked over the table before he turned to look at the greater hall and all the Reachmen and Stormlords gathered there. "When the Stag dies, know that all of you a place at the court of Wolves. Any man who has a sword and a hate of Lions is welcome there". He looked back to Margaery, ignoring Renly completely as his sworn warriors took up their cloaks and shields and made to march out of her presence. "It was nice to meet you, your Grace".

"Margaery" she corrected him, and he gave her a hint of a smile and bent his head to her as much as he ever would to anyone. "Please stay, your Grace". For some reason she did not want him to leave.

"It was good to meet you, Margaery" he told her as Grey Wind, that warm and furry presence so kindly leant against her, rose and returned to his master's side, almost knocking the heavy oak table over as he did so. "He likes you" he reflected, reaching out to grab the beast's fur in his now gauntleted hand. "And he mistrusts your lordly husband. Of all living creatures I heed the words of the Gods first, and his second. My offer of sanctuary extends to you as well, lady Margaery" he looked to Renly, and the ice of winter was in his eyes. "I will pray that you will not need it. Farewell, Margaery of House Tyrell".

"Farewell, Robb Stark" she smiled back at him before he turned to leave, and under the silent stare of Renly Baratheon and his Rainbow Guard the Northerners marched out of the hall. When the guards of House Caswell weren't quick enough to get out of the way and open the doors in time that red giant, Smalljon Umber, shoved them aside. With a single mighty kick and a bellow to match Smalljon made the handlebars splinter and the doors fly open with a bang.

In the light of the broken doors the Young Wolf and his mighty beast lingered for an instant, turning over their shoulders to look back at Margaery. Eyes of yellow, eyes of blue. Eyes of winter. Eyes very much the same. And then they walked out into the light and were gone.

* * *

 ** _Renly_**

"Thank the Gods we took Edric with us here" Renly Baratheon breathed out hard as he read the letter in his hands, delivered to him by a raven from Bronzegate. "If not he'd be lost to us if I hadn't heard about this damned army my brother's conjured out of the flames!" He threw the parchment roll away from him in disgust, onto the table of Bitterbridge Keep's Chamber of Swords, sitting there in the presence of most of his commanders and his Rainbow Guard as well as his queen. Only two faces were missing: Loras – beloved, faithful, true Loras – and Roren Bulwer, uncle and commander to the infant Sylas Bulwer of Blackcrown and his lady sister who ruled there, Victoria.

"The irony is almost sweet, your Grace" noted Lyall Ashford from aside, feet stretched arrogantly out before him as he sipped of his bronze cup. That cup was a gift from the late lord Jon Bulwer, an ancient thing that was as old as the Hightower and the legend Garth Greenhand, and wines of tin and steel ran along its sides. "Your brother spent the better part of the Usurpation trapped behind those walls. Now he lays siege to them, like Lord Mace did so long ago. History makes fools of us all, doesn't it?"

Baelor 'Brightsmile' Hightower shot the man a sharp look from aside, his armour splendid and radiant and his sword's crossbar lined with seven jewels in the colours of the rainbow. "What would you have us do, your Grace?" he asked, that noblest and most chivalrous of knights. "Should we march on Storm's End? Stannis only has a few thousand men with him, and we have a hundred thousand at our back".

"Make that less three thousand" Loras said as he entered the chamber in a flurry, his green and golden cloak flowing like a waterfall off the back of his silver armour hammered with flowers in the thousands. "Roran Bulwer is nowhere to be found, or any of the men in his command. Two sentries said they saw his men on the outskirts of their patrol the morning after Stark came here to parley" he explained as he took the seat next to Renly, a heavy cast to his otherwise glorious face. "They said he was striking the Stag banner and raising another. One of grey and white. Stark colours".

"Bulwer did trade words with Stark in his tent before the Wolf left" Baelor Hightower noted, glancing as he did so at the far side of the room where Margaery and several of her ladies, some of which included the commanders' wives and daughters and female relatives and relations, idly reading while the other ladies sew or composed songs or wrote poetry like ladies of the Reach were supposed to do. "A man I trust claims that he saw it. He approached him just after his pet giant smashed the doors of the keep, pulled him aside. I thought nothing of it then, but now…" he shook his head as he ran his hand over the gold rings on his fingers, the metal shining in the light of the braziers around the room. "Traitor".

"Surely there must be some sort of explanation to this" Lyall Ashford protested, putting his goblet to the surface of the table. "This… Roren would not do this, your Grace. He might be an inbred dreamer, but he is not a traitor. House Bulwer are loyal to the Crown".

"To which crown?" Tanton Fossoway of Cider Hall spoke up from the left of the Hightower heir. "There are many these days. Some of gold, some of bronze and iron. It doesn't make him any less of a traitor. Your Grace" he turned fully towards Renly "we should march after him. Show him that the scions of Greenhand and Durran Godsgrief do not suffer traitors to live".

"Oh, that we will – but we head for Storm's End first" Renly told them as he stood. "Tell the men of the flying column to rouse themselves. We ride on the morrow, at first light. The footmen and archers stay here while I tend to my brother. Then we turn north to the Riverlands and show this upstart puppy that we do not take kindly to threats". He looked to his wife, absorbed in her reading as she was, just like she had been for three days hence since the Stark boy had waltzed into his camp and might as well have spat him in the eye. "The council is dismissed".

"It's a history of Westeros, written by Grand Maester Ellendor" Margaery told him later as she and him headed back to his chambers arm in arm, Loras trailing behind them a ways back to give them privacy but to still protect his king. He was so loyal, his Knight of Flowers, so graceful and strong. Why couldn't his sister be the same? "I read the one written by Archmaester Perestan, but he barely mentions the North at all. Hardly more than a single paragraph about the First Men. That one just said that the Andals faced resistance from 'native savages' when they came to this continent".

"Why are you so keen to learn about the North, my dear Margaery?" Renly's voice was level and calm but he seethed on the inside. He didn't love this woman, this member of the weaker and less fair sex, but she had made starry eyes at that Stark boy for the entire feast, asking him questions and feeding treats to his pet monster. She had insulted him in that. She, who he had wed in the light of the Seven. "Is it because of Stark? Are you fond of him?"

"He is our enemy, my lord husband" she replied back to him, but though the words came assured and seemingly honest he had spent enough time around Loras to know that a Tyrell had a very specific look about them when they were losing ground and on unsure footing. "Is not knowledge power? The more you know about Robb Stark the easier it will be to defeat him".

"You would like to _know_ him, now wouldn't you?" She stepped back from him and slapped him hard across the cheek, but when Loras moved to hurry up to them Renly gave him a look and shook his head. "Forgive me, my lady wife" Renly told her then, regretting that he had said that. Margaery was a kind soul, a pretty youngster with a gentle spirit just like her brother's. She no doubt had taken a liking to that furry freak of a wolf the Stark man had brought with him and wanted to know if there were more of them. "I spoke out of rashness and vexation. A thousand pardons". And he had. That the Wolf had stolen men of his, men sworn to his cause, made him want to curse and spit and pray to become a better warrior like his beloved Loras just so he could kill and skin the Wolf himself.

"Of course, lord husband" Margaery said aloud. Inside her eyes a different light shone. It was said that kings never apologised or sought to excuse themselves, but that had been said during the Targaryen era, and all of them had been mad. How had Robert ruled? _Poorly_. But Robert never apologised either. And perhaps he had set a bad example, allowing this since the first time she had done it. But she had Loras's eyes, and he could neither strike nor reprimand his Beloved's sister. It was beyond him.

 _Gods_. How he hated this violence and war business. Tourneys and melees were all well and good, but so much senseless death and despair. But the people loved him, stood at his back, and he would bring down the pretenders seated on the Iron Throne. Children born of abominable incest, to false Lions strutting and swaggering through the Red Keep like it was theirs. But it wasn't. It was Baratheon. By blood and by hammer the Stag had been crowned, and by the Seven Renly would not give that crown up to anyone, be they Dragon or Lion or Wolf.

"How goes your studies?" he forced himself back to the present, taking his wife and his Beloved by surprise with his smile and his forgiving ways. "Well, go on then – tell me why Ellandor is better than Perastin or whomever".

"Ehm" Margaery cleared her throat "Grand Maester Ellendor actually deals with the legends before history. He called it 'the Age of Heroes'" she began as she went on her way along with him when they continued towards their wing of the small keep. "The age from after the First Men settled Westeros but before the Andals came in force. Almost five thousand years. When all the kingdoms of Westeros were founded, including the North. And when the Age of Heroes ended the North was the only kingdom that managed to hold the Andals back. That is why they keep to those strange gods and odd traditions: because they are more First Men than they are Andals. Some more than others, of course. House Manderly, who rules at… some river, I can't recall – is an exiled noble family from the Reach and keep the Seven. And on the islands in the far North, Skagos, they are almost all savages. Like the wilding peoples that lived beyond the Wall".

"Beyond the Wall? Thought that was the end of the world, there" Renly mused at her rambling about inane things and linked his arm with his wife's for appearances' sake, casting a look over his shoulder back at Loras as he did so. Loras gave him a smile. One of those smiles that he lived and breathed for. "Surely there is nothing there but ice and darkness. You have heard how unkind the North is to even its own sons".

Margaery was about to start rambling on about boorish history again but, _thank the Gods_ , they rounded a corner in the keep and more or less ran into Mya the nursemaid and Edric Storm.

Edric. Such a lovely little child. His brother's bastard – one of about a thousand running around Westeros, no doubt. Robert Baratheon had spread his seed in every major city and castle North to South, leaving behind a trail of black hair and blue eyes wherever he went except for in his own marital bed, but Edric Storm was the only one that Renly knew of that was possessed of noble blood. Half of House Florent had joined Stannis out of religious fervour, but the other half was still loyal because of that child and his mother. And Edric was a good boy. Kind, brave, gregarious for a child. Well spoken, and Baratheon through and through.

"Look!" Edric showed Margaery something, a stuffed animal or toy of some sort in an incomprehensible grey blob, and Margaery made sounds of gladness and amusement, squeals no human should ever rightly make. She was good with children, she truly was, and she was a patron of orphanages and poorhouses from Highgarden to Oldtown. Edric had taken to her almost instantly, and she was almost like a mother to him now that his blood mother had left for Dragonstone and Stannis's army. He was almost glad for it. Renly had no… persuasion towards childmaking himself, and Margaery wanted children. Edric could be a son to her once he took the Baratheon name. And they could reign from King's Landing together: Edric, Margaery and Renly Baratheon. And Loras.

Renly separated from his wife and her babying of the eight-year old lad and went to join Loras by one of the windows, from which you could see the whole of their mighty army. A hundred thousand men sworn to him, camped under a sunny sky fading into dusk. And the Knight of Flowers at his side. In truth, Renly did not worry about the war or the Crown or Stannis. The war was all but won already.

 _Gods_ , he felt like he would live forever.

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** At first this chapter was supposed to be only from Robb's and Margaery's points of view. But then I couldn't help but do Renly, give some perspective to the man, and when the idea of Roose being the POV character for the first part of the chapter occurred to me I just couldn't let it go. Sorry if the chapter feels a little schizophrenic because of that, and I hope I characterised either of Renly and Roose well.

You might have noticed how Robb and Smalljon talk differently in Margaery's point of view, at least at first. Fact is, the people of Westeros have different accents and dialects. And I wanted to show how she gradually, but very quickly, learned to understand it fully unlike Renly. Except for that this chapter is mostly set up for stuff that comes later down the line.

And don't you worry. Renly doesn't live forever. Not even close.

Next chapter will feature the POVs of Margaery, Robb and a special mystery character? Hmm. I wonder who could it be? ... I'm being facetious. And sarcastic.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed.

Ta.


	3. Honourable Traitors

Chapter Three – Honourable Traitors

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

"I've had no answers yet" Roren Bulwer stated as he rode beside Robb towards Riverrun. "And the dreams are worse in your presence, your Grace, not less powerful".

For twelve days Robb had travelled with that Bulwer man from the south, joined by five hundred mounted men as Dacey and Smalljon along with Ser Brebin Vanderhart, bannerman to House Bulwer marched with the infantry of that same house, two and a half thousand men under the Bullskull banner of Bulwer and Blackcrown, an ancient keep on the outlet of the Honeywine, kept by that old family descended from Bors the Breaker of Greenhand's get. Even though Bulwer kept to the Seven and had been amongst the first to convert their loyalty to the Andal gods had almost always been… superficial. Robb thought that was the right word for it. All surface and no centre. For as ancient as their House was the Bulwer line was bound to have secrets and dark shadows in their history, and chief amongst them was the Dreaming.

" _I saw a Wolf walk in a forest where the trees whispered his name_ " he had said when they had met for the first time, after one of the seven or eight bastards of Brebin Vanderhart had stepped in front of Armstark's hooves and demanded to meet the King in the North. And what had followed had been intriguing to say the least. " _The blood-splattered snow covered the ground beneath his paws as he brought the Winter with him, and his eyes shone blue and burning_ ".

" _And your family has always had these dreams, Lord Bulwer?_ " Robb had still be suspicious as an armoured knight entered the red and green Bulwer pavilion, the one from Renly's rainbow Kingguard clad top-to-toe in maroon and sanguine armour. That one that had seemed so familiar yet so unplaceable.

" _One every generation since the founding of my house, your Grace_ ". He had called Robb 'your Grace' from the very start despite how he had rejected Renly and all but made war with the Reach, which had been a good sign to the Young Wolf. " _At least one of us is always struck by it. Dreams of images, a green haze through which mad sights of past and present can be seen. But… ever since I heard of you coming down from the North it has grown worse. My dreams are filled with Wolves and crows and roses with iron thorns dripping with blood as the flowers twisted on themselves and made to kill each other_ ".

" _I see_ ". A few months ago, a single month earlier even, Robb would have dismissed it as madness out of hand. Then though, after the Vision had come to him, he was inclined to believe just about anything. And old Nan had told him stories, stories about the green dreams and the Greenseers, about the Gods and the Others. But things had changed. " _And you believe that I am this Wolf. I had heard stories of the Green Dreams, Lord Roren. Perhaps together we will find out what they mean_ ". And then, as he had thought on stories and memory he had realised it, and he had turned to the Red Knight of the Rainbow guard. " _Royce. You're Yohn Royce's kinsman, aren't you?_ "

" _Verily, that I am, your Grace. I am Robar Royce_ " he had bowed, that dark and rugged fellow from the Vale, with all the respect due a king that he had not knelt to. " _Lord Yohn of Runestone is my father. And our families have always held close counsel with other true descendants of the First Men. We Remember_ ". Aye, so it was. House Royce had the oldest memory in all of Westeros. Secrets dark and frightening both were kept in the records of Runestone. " _I am sworn to serve Renly Baratheon, your Grace – but We Remember our old alliances with the Starks of Winterfell. Ask me anything else but to betray my duty, and you shall have it, your Grace_ ".

Robb's answer had been nearly instant. " _Tell me about Margaery Tyrell_ ".

He had hoped to learn that she was a deviant, that she was cruel, that she was anything but the kind and magnanimous and smallfolk-loving young woman of high birth that she really were. He had hoped to break her spell over him that way, so that he could turn his heart elsewhere and focus once again. Every day since that day she had haunted his mind like the spectre of the life that he would never have. He saw her when he closed his eyes, when he smelled the flowers on the wind, when the taste of honey was on his lips when he woke up –

He hadn't eaten anything sweet at Renly's ill advised feast. Grey Wind had, from the Summer-Sun Flower-Maid's fingers, but Robb Stark hadn't.

 _Gods, what accursed sorcery is this?_

"The dreams have changed, though" Roren Bulwer broke the spell on Robb for the moment and catapulted him back to the now, when he was nothing but a tired young king straddling one of the bravest and dumbest horses in Westeros. "Perhaps the Seven are showing me the way. Perhaps it is your gods that are showing me the way". Roren was not a large man, short and stocky and with arms as thick as a blacksmith's and a neck like a bull's, but in contrast to that his skin was pale and wan, almost yellowed and his hair all but gone despite his young age. The rings beneath his eyes were deep and discoloured enough to be scars, and his eyes were always unfocused and more red than white. Roren Neversleep, some called him. He would use drugs and draughts to keep himself awake and out of the Dreaming state.

"What do you see now, Bulwer?" Their negotiation had been long and ardoursome, but all Roren had truly wanted were answers, and Robb had been able to give him some. By the stories of Nan and some wives tales from the North that he had heard from his personal guard he had given Roren more than any maester or wise woman ever had, which somehow seemed odd. Something else had made the Southron noble follow the Direwolf banner and bend his knee to Robb, but what? Because it certainly wasn't only because of empty stories. Perhaps he truly was driven. Or perhaps it was nothing but a scheme.

"Trees, your Grace" Neversleep shuddered, and Robb arched an eyebrow at how frightened that strong bull of a man seemed. "Trees, white and tall, Weirwoods. Thousands upon thousands of them, reaching for me with their branches, tearing the flesh off my bones. They had faces, and their mouths were filled with teeth. And then they suddenly weren't. They were all smiling, and the sun was shining, and I a saw an island in a great lake. But the branches held me yet, and I could not move as their tendrils pushed through my skin and into my eyes".

Robb said nothing for a little while, absorbing the vivid images Roren had delivered onto him. "Your nightmares are even worse than mine, Lord Bulwer" he confessed at last and shook his head. All he ever dreamt of – before these last ten days – were pains all around and throughout his body as quarrels struck him and blades impaled him. No images, no sights. Only pain and screams and the howling of dying wolves.

The Bulwer men were good sorts, though they seemed a little untested to Robb. Too romantic, not jaded enough like most seasoned warriors were. Then again, it had been nigh-on twenty years since the Reach went to war and much longer than that since there had been any good fighting going on so far south. Apparently Roren Bulwer was the leader of the house in all but name, as he was the guardian of his niece Alyssene despite the efforts of his sister and second cousin and niece three times removed – the Bulwer family tree was horribly convoluted and bordered on incestuous at times – Victaria Bulwer and her infant son, Sylas. That was how he could swear his entire House to the Direwolf banner and still not be an outcast from his kin and have the loyalty of his men. Robb wondered if they would hold under the pressure of battle. They had betrayed once – perhaps they would betray again.

He would have to see. Time would tell, and they would be bloodied soon enough.

When they rode in under the portcullis of Riverrun, over the drawbridge over the wide moat that served the keep so well and had done so in ages past, they were met with thunderous cheer as the soldiers that roused themselves saw the Direwolf banner of House Stark and Robb's own Wolfshead flowing behind him. There were no shouts of "King in the North", though, thankfully. Those had a tendency to escalate into even more cheering and chanting that Robb knew that he had no time for.

He beckoned Owen Norrey to him from behind, and the lumbering clansman came quickly, turning his good ear towards Robb. "Call my council, all of them, to the warroom. There is no time for us to rest". Owen bowed and saluted before he hurried to shout at the messengers, and so Robb nodded to himself, shaking visions of brown doe eyes from his mind as he unhorsed Armstark and beckoned the stableboys to him.

Armstark had been a gift for his fifteenth nameday, a gift from the old Rodrick Ryswell from out of the finest stables in all the North, the Ryswells having bred horses ever since their ancestors, as Horse Kings of the Rills, bent their knees to Rickard Stark the Laughing Wolf thousands of years earlier. Armstark was the latest and greatest scion of a long line of shaggy Ryswell coldbloods, white with a flowing black crest, standing at almost seventeen hands high at the withers, strong and tall and mighty. Unfortunately, Armstark was dumb as a post. Robb suspected that was why the horse went so willingly into battle yet remained so docile towards other horses and around Grey Wind. He simply did not know any better. Probably thought the Direwolf was a big furry friend and that the Lannisters were good and honest people.

Before the stableboys brought Armstark away and saw to the horses of the Bulwer men Robb walked up to the horse and took from within his saddlebags his old breastplate. The one he wore now, borrowed to him by one of his personal guard in great charity, was a poor fit, but the old breastplate had been run through in one place and had cracked down the entire front, almost split in two. With it in hand he went to the smithy to go see to a few smaller matters before the council of war.

Perhaps he could even go five minutes without thinking of Margaery Tyrell and her summer scent.

"Your Grace!" the smiths of the smithy on the edge of Riverrun's great courtyard greeted him, gathering all as one to stand in a line before them, the brawny Lucan and the old Bromber shoving at each other in open spite while Ferrel and Tib regarded the two in amusement.

"We came across a bit of trouble on the road" Robb muttered as he handed the cracked breastplate over to Lucan, one of those four smiths that worked the Riverrun forge. "Lannister scouts. My gambeson took the blow, so I am unhurt. But I need better armour". Lucan nodded and muttered. He was the master armoursmith there, while Bromber, who was a greensmith by trade and had served House Tully for nigh on twenty-seven years and forged Robb's crown for him, was the one who owned the forge. Now he and his apprentices and assistants had to crowd in with Lucan's and swordsmith Tib's and even those of the Glover silversmith, Ferrel, who Robb had incidentally spoken to before he rode south. "And that other matter?"

"Yes, yes, the question of a mint has been on my mind for quite some time, your Grace" Lucan the armoursmith muttered and frowned with his bushy eyebrows over the plate in his hands. "We all thought o' it by the time his Magnificent Poofness Bromber brought it up. So we had ourselves a wee contest, so we did" he put the breastplate aside and showed Robb towards one of the scorched tables in the smithy. On it were a gathering of three coins, silver ones to replace the silver stag of the south when the war was over and the North needed its own currency. "We each made a hammer, to show our skill. I made the wolfshead one, Tib made the crowned wolf, and his Magnificent Poofness made the dead lion. Ferrel worked on your likeness, your Grace".

Robb picked up one of the coins and turned the silver over in his hand. On one side there was his face in profile, bearded and thick of hair and surrounded by the name Robb Stark in bold lettering, and on the reverse a lion with a sword through its heart and the words Winter is Coming around it. Another had the Stark running Direwolf and the words were King in the North. And on the last – the Wolfshead on that coin was very much like the one carried on the shields of his men, but it faced the other side, so that no matter how you turned the coin face up both heads on it seemed to look to the left. And over the Wolfshead… "'The North Remembers'" Robb nodded as he read and then took that coin, tossing it to Lucan. "Make more of this one, but keep the others. I might have a use for them".

"As your will, your Grace" Lucan said as the four master blacksmiths bowed to him, and when he turned to leave the smithy and strode past its doorway he could hear the jests and the exclamation. "Hah! Told you, you fucking poof! Lion with a sword through it – are you taking the piss?!"

Robb found himself smiling a hint as he left the smithy and crossed the courtyard without too much fanfare, stopping once or twice to speak with some of his outrider captains and their men. He conversed with them, let them know him. It was one of Father's principles: _never ask your men to die for a someone that they do not know_. And he had kept it to heart, and in turn the soldiers loved him and shouted "the King in the North!" at his back when he left them, eager and fresh to find his enemies and ride them down. The guards that opened the gates of the Riverrun citadel for him wore Stark colours but Tully livery, a grey fish on white water, and even they called him king.

The Bulwer men would do so too, in time. As Robb hurriedly climbing the steps of the keep, wondering when he at last could take off his armour and rest his shoulders for only a moment, Maester Wyman approached him, whispering "A raven from King's Landing brought this, your Grace". Robb nodded and took the paper that the maester offered. It was in Sansa's hand, and he smiled when he saw the same loops in the bends that Maester Luwin had taught him when he was a boy, but despite the handwriting it was still the Queen's words. Damned Cersei Lannister, that brother-fucking she-lion. He knew that Joffery was a braggart and a fool, but he was Cersei's boy in everything. She might not have been the one who ordered Father's head chopped off, but she might as well have been. And she had ordered his arrest and the butchering of Father's men.

Oh, the Lannisters had a lot to answer for. "Mother has seen it?" Robb asked the Maester, anger burning in his heart now, and the old man nodded. "Good". And so Robb crushed the note in his gauntleted fist and went on up through the keep, to his designated Warroom on one of the castle's higher floors, inwardly cursing over lions and Lannisters. How he hated them. With all his heart. No matter how many times he told himself that the war was just and for a good reason, he knew that what drove him to it was more vengeance than it was justice. Though ever since the Gods had spoken to him the two seemed to blur together as one. _Forsake Righteousness_. He hated doing it, but if that was what needed to be done he would do it. For his Father. For Eddard Stark.

For the North.

A few lords had already gathered within and without the warroom by the time Robb got there, and chief amongst the ones waiting by the sides of the doors was the Lord of the Dreadfort. Roose's eyes still unnerved Robb, cold and white and black all at one, narrow slits in his face through which he could see the Leechlord's soul and abhor what lay therein, but not as much as they had used to. He had seen into the eyes of the Gods. No mortal eyes could hope to even make him flinch now.

 _Brown eyes, shining with life and cleverness and a gentle soul. A smile, bright and perfect. Hair that tumbled thick and brown down her shoulders. She smelled of Summer, of warmth, of life and love and fields of golden roses._

He all but slapped himself back to the present as the Lord Bolton approached him while he hurried down the hallway, the heels of his boots ringing harsh against the stone floors. Ahead lay the warroom, and the Leech of the Dreadfort walked by his side in through those double doors. "What news from the South, my king?" Roose asked, and Robb let out a sound of frustration. "What of Renly Baratheon? Did it go as you had hoped?"

"'Did it go as I hoped?' Did it bollocks" Robb cursed and flung open those doors, meeting there the familiar faces of his closest commanders. Rickard Karstark still had mud on his boots and had a new sword at his hip, the last broken when he beheaded a particularly thick-necked Lannister bannerman. "Mormont! Blackwood! Did you manage to kill off that fucking Lannister shite of a knight?"

"No, King Stark" Maege glowered aside, short fingers drumming at the sleeves of her leather jerkin. "He's got eight thousand men with him. We don't. We're spread too thin, Stark, though we did make that blonde-haired ponce hurt. We can't hold the Riverlands with only twenty thousand men and fight the Lannisters at the same time".

"We've another three thousand to add to that" Robb told them, and the rest of them seemed taken aback by this new development. What had the he done to make three thousand men suddenly join his cause - sown fields with Dragon's teeth like the heroes of the ancient stories? "No, I didn't conjure them from out of the fucking winter winds. The commander of House Bulwer struck his banners and joined our cause, and so did all his men. It seems that they didn't want to be sworn to a seven years old girl and a boy still suckling at the teat".

"Whatfor?" Roose asked as the young king reached up to rub his eyes. "Keeping to the traditions of chivalry or not, even these Southron knights do nothing without expecting recompense. What does this... this Bulwar want in return for his allegiance?"

"He wants to know the will of the Gods" Robb answered him quietly, staring darkly at the far window of the warroom, seeing brown eyes reflected back at him from the few warm memories he had left not coloured by bitterness and sorrow or vengeful rage. "He has five hundred mounted men and knights at his back, and two and a half thousand heavy pike and longbowmen. We will see if he knelt to me with truth in his heart. Lord Tytos - where is Steffon Lannister's army camped?"

"Three days north of Pinkmaiden now by my own reckoning, your Grace" Blackwood had proven himself a man loyal to the Stark cause even though he was a Tully bannerman by birth. His family kept to the Old Ways as much as a Riverlander House could, and by the shadow of that enormous and dead Weirwood heart tree that stood outside of Raventree hall they kept the Gods too, not Seven with all their light and sound and fury. "That is what my scouts say, at least. It seems that he heads for Pinkmaiden and House Piper. Ever since Jaime Lannister-"

"The Kingslayer, that?" Maege asked, and all turned their heads to her. "What? Kingslayer is what he is. Oathbreaker and traitor most accursed. Though I thought his name was Jon or James or something like that".

"Ever since Jaime Lannister smashed Clement Piper's and Darrel Vance's forces by the Golden Tooth Old Piper has been sitting astride the wall of the war, us to one side and Lions to the other" Blackwood spoke up as if he hadn't been interrupted while Edmure Tully gave him a long look. It was no secret that the heir to House Piper was a close friend of the heir to House Tully. "All it would take is an army at his gate to make him tip one way or the other. Pinkmaiden is as good as lost, your Grace".

"Then we will retake it" Robb made a show of being unconcerned, and by the looks of his commanders he knew that he had succeeded in instilling concern, not confidence. He cleared his head of brown eyes and focused. It was time for a speech. "Smalljon's wee sister and her men will come with us, and the Bolton outriders and Glover and Tully horse, too. Uncle, you and the Blackfish will hold the Riverlands. Remember what I have told you. Piper has forsaken us for too long, my lords and ladies. We will fall on him in the dead of night and slaughter the lions he would cleave to. Then he can choose to bend the knee or see his House hanged for oathbreaking. One way or another, he will know that Winter has come for him".

"Aye!" they spoke back to him as one, but it was Galbart Glover who smiled broadly and raised his spiked steel gauntlet above his head and shouted "The King in the North!" And that shout spread through the room, even Roose the Leechlord joining in a hushed hiss of a whisper, and soon it came back at Robb from the courtyard and halls of Riverrun as the fighters of every banner and even the Bulwer men joined in on the call.

But through all their shouting Robb could hear a voice carried on the wings of memory. _Farewell, Robb Stark_. A voice as soft as silk.

Damn it all, why couldn't he get Margaery Tyrell out of his head?

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

As she held her dagger awkwardly in her hand and Edric's shaking fingers in her other Margaery wondered why it had all gone so wrong. Well, she knew why. Renly had died. And now either his sworn banners turned home or turned to Stannis, his murderer.

But she wondered why the Seven had allowed such a thing to happen.

"Hush, now" she whispered over her shoulder to Elinor Tyrell, who huddled against the back of the alcove with Alla and Megga, also of Tyrell, and Alyce Graceford, those of her ladies in waiting who hadn't all but vanished with their fathers' and husbands' hosts when the news came of Renly's death. "Don't cry out. Not a word". As she and the ladies and the trembling little boy hid there in that stony alcove of Bitterbridge Keep she heard the sound of armoured footsteps coming closer. She adjusted her grip on her dagger and prayed that she would know how to use it when the time for using it came.

The dagger was an ornate and gilded thing given to her on the day of her wedding as a gift from a Tyroshi merchant lord called Jaerio… something or other… and was broad at the hilt yet narrow at the tip. With any luck it should have been able to punch through armour. "Find the Tyrell whore and the bastard!" came the voice of the Florent men from down the hall, and pressing themselves into the shadows of the alcove the ladies behind her cried silently as armoured soldiers with the Fox on their breastplates ran past. "King Stannis wants them alive – but not unspoilt!"

The sight of the man that walked past the alcove then, a knight in the colours of House Florent with a red tuft atop his helmet and followed by another from House Meadows, made Margaery's stomach turn. _Traitors_. She knew now why Robb Stark and the northerners hated them. Her little knife would do little against their plate suits, but it was the only weapon she had, and she would die before she let them touch her. Suddenly the knights turned at once, putting their backs to Margaery and the alcove to look down the far hall, and through the sound of distant fighting she heard a new rumble.

"Eat their hearts!" a roar blasted into the Florent men, followed by a charge of spears and swords. Through flashes of steel and the cries of the wounded and slain Margaery glimpsed Valemen features and livery of bronze, brown and black. The struggle within the keep mirrored that of the hundred small battles fought in the night without, as the camp of the Storm King and the beloved Stag tore itself apart when Tyrell and Hightower fought Meadows, Florent and all those other lesser houses that had declared fully for Stannis the moment Renly died.

Megga let out a shrill cry as the dead crashed into the walls beside the alcove, but over the noise of the puissance she went unheard. Margaery pressed Edric back against the wall and the window with the other ladies when a knight, struck back, stumbled to his knees in the shadows of the alcove.

It was the Florent knight, the one who had said that his men could "spoil" her if they wanted to, and with a sickening turn of her stomach she raised her knife. Her hand was trembling like the wings of a newly hatched sparrow, and silently she prayed to the Maid and the Warrior that she would strike true.

And strike through she did. The blade struck the knight in the neck – and then it broke.

The Florent knight howled in pain as Margaery's knife slanted off the bottom of his coif and broke as it went upwards under his helmet, cutting the straps off it and throwing it off his head as it made a deep gash across his cheek, missing his eye by a hair. Roaring in inarticulate rage he stood and Margaery stumbled back, holding that now merely four inches long dagger in her hand limply. The Florent knight parted his lips and raised his sword, making to curse her and call her a whore, a dead whore – but then a sword was thrust through the back of his head and out his mouth.

"My lady Tyrell" Robar Royce, once the Red of Renly's Rainbow guard but now garbed in a fey suit of burnished armour that seemed more ancient than the earth itself, panted as he wrenched his longsword out of the head of the Florent knight and then took off his plumed helmet and bowed once the corpse had slumped to the floor and bled all over Margaery's slippers and the hem of her black dress. "At your service. Are you hurt?" He glanced to the broken knife in her hand and gave a court nod. "Poorly tempered, no doubt. Tyroshi do not know how to make proper blades".

"I found that out the hard way, Ser Royce" Margaery cast the broken weapon away from her in disgust and gestured to Edric and the ladies to go forth with her out into the group of Royce guards and squires. "We are unhurt, thank the Seven". Not that it stopped fat Megga from bawling like a babe or Alla and Elinor from weeping quietly or Edric from being so scared that he shook like an aspen leaf, though Alyce, thankfully, kept her mouth shut, staring at the son of House Royce in awe. "Florent and Meadows… they were sworn to my father. How could they do this?"

"When fortune turns the tides of war the wind changes with them" Ser Robar gestured to his men to form up, half in front of Margaery and her ladies and half behind her. "And men turn their coats after the way the wind blows. We looked for you, my Lady. By your leave we would escort you to safety". Margaery nodded and liked her lips. They felt dry and cracked. Damn it all, what would her mother say about the state of her and her gown? Gods, that was such a fool thing to worry about, yet she could think of nothing but it. The shock, doubtlessly. It was doing strange things to her head.

"Gods bless you, Robar Royce" she told the Red Knight, now Bronze, as they set off down the halls of Bitterbridge keep, the very halls that she had walked with her now dead husband not twenty days hence when death and defeat had seemed an impossibility. "You, at least, have your honour. How is it that some men are so much more loyal than others? Are some simply born with better hearts?"

"I am of Runstone and the line of the Bronze Kings, my lady". Royce spoke back darkly, a scowl shifting his ruggedly comely features as he spied down one hallway and then the next before signalling his men to advance, the jagged runes hammered into the plates of his armour filling with shadows under the flickering torchlight. "We Remember. We remember where our loyalties should rightly lie". Another group of Royce bannermen waited down the next corridor, raising the number of the escort to one and a half dozen as they brought with them two chests. Margaery recognized them from her and Renly's chambers. "I thought that you would want your clothes with you on our way, my Lady".

"Bless you sevenfold, Ser Royce" she thanked him and laid her hand upon his shoulder. His armour – it was warm to the touch. Almost unnaturally so. He politely but firmly shrugged off her touch, a gentleman in every respect. He had volunteered to be the member of the Rainbow guard that stayed behind to protect the Queen when Renly rode into battle against Stannis, and even though she was queen no longer – and had never been in truth – he was still loyal. She glanced back at Alyce and saw the blush in her pale cheeks and starry look in her pale eyes as she followed the Bronze Knight with her gaze. Robar was unmarried, and with the Rainbow guard dissolved he deserved to be rewarded. Alyce was pretty enough, and from a fairly prestigious family. It would be a good match.

But making marriages and tying loyal vassals even closer to her house would have to wait. They descended the steps of the keep to the great vestibule and found it guarded by a score of Florent and Stormlander men. Royce held back his men from advancing before he raised the crossguard of his simple longsword to his brow and said a short prayer to the Warrior for strength and the Father for nobility and trueness of heart. After he had finished he lowered his blade and bared his teeth at the Florent men as he walked down the steps of the stone stairs and into their sight, placing the helmet back on his head, his azure cape spotted with blood on his back, mighty in his bronze like a figure of legend. "Stand aside or die!"

"Not fucking likely, heathen Valeman scum!" one of the Florent spoke back at him. "We were told the guard these doors, and by the Burning Heart we shall!" These men… they even kept the Red God, like Stannis. How had they not known? How had they let such men join the ranks of their mighty army?

"Very well" Royce replied and levelled his sword at the Florent men as they all pointed their spears and their swords at him. "Eat their hearts!" And he rushed forth, his men charging down the stairs to join him except for a few that stayed with Margaery and her train. Royce laid into the traitor vassals like bronze wind of death, almost dancing from man to man, slashing through leathers and finding gaps in plate with almost supernatural knowledge. No, definitely supernatural. A greatsword wielded by a tall knight in green struck at the runes on Ser Royce's armour, but when the steel impacted the much weaker metal of the plates the bronze did not break. Instead it was the blade that did, shattering like glass, slivers of metal flying through the air to impale and blind Florent men but did not even come close to the Royce guards.

Sorcery, or chance? Margaery had seen metal break just a little while earlier, after all. But still she doubted. The Gods had allowed the gentlest of kings to die, so what unhallowed powers protected this man of the Vale?

And then it was over. When all the Florent men lay dead or wounded or had routed from the keep – so much senseless blood and death – Royce gestured at the stairs, and tentatively Margaery and her following were escorted down the steps and out before the keep where they could see the camp of the dead stag burn around them, and barely Royce had time to order his pages and men to get their horses so that they could set off on their way before a dozen riders could be seen approaching the keep from the east. At first Margaery was scared, but when she saw what two figures led those Tyrell knights she smiled with relief from ear to ear. "Margaery! Thank the Gods you are safe!"

It was Loras who led them, Loras and Brienne of Tarth, the Blue and the Lord Commander of the Rainbow guard respectively, and Margaery breathed out a long sigh of relief. Her brother was here now, and he was one of the fiercest and bravest warriors in all the world. His silver armour was steeped in gore from elbow to chin. "Blessed seven for you, Royce! Now we can go to Highgarden in peace!"

But Royce didn't answer to that. With an air of solemn duty he stepped up before Margaery and hefted his longsword high. "I am escorting the Lady, my Lord" he intoned darkly. "And she goes not to Highgarden". _What?_

"Stand and deliver, Robar!" Loras shouted at them, and the Bronze Knight raised his sword in warning. "You-! You are as much a traitor as the others!"

"My loyalties never waver. I would die for my rightful Lord" Royce spoke back and set his feet wide, affixing the Knight of Flowers with his dark eyes. "The High King of the First Men, of all of us, North and Mountain and River, even the ones that dwell in the Vale of Arryn. Robb Stark – the King in the North!"

"Loras!" Brienne halted him with her massive arm as the Royce men shouted "the King in the North!", and she held back the Knight of Flowers from charging in blindly and riding down the squires and men of the Vale. "Think of your lady sister! She is their hostage!" Margaery felt a cold hand seize her heart as she stared at the back of Robar Royce's armour and then glanced around her. The Valemen surrounded her and her following, like a ring of steel drawn tight to leave not a single gap through which she could escape. Royce was no different from the rest of them.

"Think on it, Lord Commander" Robar spoke up then, looking darkly at Loras all the while even as he rolled his shoulder under that ancient armour. "Ten thousand traitors hold the western camp. A dozen riders with double the weight in the saddles will not punch through that with ease, and Mace Tyrell is in Highgarden. The Riverlands are closer. The Wolf gave his word that we would be safe in his court, and the King of Winter is sweet on her. You saw it, as clear as I did too".

"She comes home with me!" Brother shouted, his face contorted and mad with grief and anger, but as he panted in his rage he glanced at his men and then to the chaos that lay across the banks of the Mander and the Bitterbridge. "Margaery decides!" he then went. "You've got your honour, Royce? Or so you claim! Let my sister and the Storm boy go where she wills!"

"My lady?" Royce lowered his sword and turned around to face her, bending his head to her decision. Perhaps he wasn't like the others, and thinking back on it he had not lied to her. An honourable traitor, just like his men. Honourable traitors all. And if her brother trusted his honour… she trusted her brother, at least, if not the Valeman. But the decision was hard fraught. Now it was a matter of survival, and if houses of the Reach and the Stormlands turned their banners to Stannis and defied her father the Lord Paramount… she made her choice. She breathed in hard to steady herself.

"Mount the horses" she told them firmly, using her queenliest tone. "We ride North for the Riverlands!"

Robb Stark, at least, had honour. Or so she hoped.

* * *

 ** _Jon_**

His brother Robb's envoy reached him at Craster's Keep, the first man not of the Night's Watch to have crossed into the North beyond the Wall in living memory.

"I'm telling you, Sam, I saw it" Jon implored his brothers Samwell, Pyp and Grenn as they sat around one of the campfires, their black cloaks drawn tight around their bodies to ward off the ever-present cold. Along with them were three hundred brothers of the Night's Watch and their horses, but none of them were within earshot. They didn't believe him as he told them what he had seen then, when he had followed Craster out the night before as he swaddled that crying babe in his arms. He had left the child on a rock deep in the haunted forest, and then… "White, white and ice all over, impossibly fair, eyes so winter blue. It spoke, Sam. I heard it. A voice like breaking ice and mountains being split apart".

"This is horseshit" Grenn cursed and shuddered, looking to Sam only to see the schooled southerner stare bleakly right in front of him. "Isn't it, Sam? It can't be real! The Others're no more than fucking wives' tales". But that was empty baying, and somehow they all knew it even before Sam answered.

"And so are the dead that walk" Sam told them, and all of them shuddered. They had met a few Wights on their patrols, all of the men participant in the Great Ranging had, a few stragglers lumbering on northwards that were easily dispatched with fire merely, but still the dead arisen. "They say that the Wights serve the Others. That fire and steel cannot kill them. That when the great frost comes and winds of winter rage there in comes the Cold Shadows, the White Walkers. We've seen Direwolves and mammoths and the bones of giants. The Others might be real too".

"I didn't take my fucking oath to fight demons, so I didn't" Pyp hacked his teeth together and tried to warm his fingers over the flickering campfire, but in vein. It was midday, but this far north everything was in a state of perpetual blue twilight when the darkness didn't fall to cover all. Suddenly Pyp frowned and rose up on his hunches, looking out southwards towards the distant Wall. "Who the fuck is he?" he muttered, and all of them craned their heads around to look. A stranger had come to their camp from the South, and he wasn't a brother of theirs.

In heavy furs and fine armour he looked more like a nobleman than anything else, though his face was rough and scarred and his nose broken enough times to denote to all his common birth. Jon and those who looked, who had trained their eyes scouting in the eternal snow of the uttermost north, knew that his armour had not been made for him. He had dragged it off a dead Westerland noble. This was someone from the far south, and not a single thing he wore, not even the heavy bundling around his freezing horse, was black. This wasn't a brother of the Night's Watch, but it was someone from the other side of the Wall.

"Oi!" the stranger called out as he approached the camp outside Craster's keep under guard by two mounted brothers in black, shivering all the while so hard that his teeth her hacking together violently. "I've got a message for one of youse! Some Jon Snow of Winterfell!" His accent was decidedly northern, and Jon stood from his friends and approached the man in question, bundled up by furs as he was. "I've got it right here, so come on, will you?! My liegelord was only allowed one man through that special gate of yours by that enormous prick Allister Throne, and I was unlucky enough to grace this fucking frozen hellscape!"

"I'm Jon Snow" Jon told the man as he approached him, hand on the stone pommel of Longclaw while the brothers of the camp, even the Lord Commander himself, approached the messenger from behind. He didn't seem to be even slightly intimidated, though, that messenger herald. He was used to men in swords gathering around him in the hundreds. On his breastplate and on his cloak was, after all, the chained giant of House Umber stitched and embossed. And going by his voice Jon thought that he must have been a herald of some sort.

"You'd be him, then?" the Umber bannerman asked, holding back a clattering of the teeth, and aware of all the eyes on him Jon nodded. "Aye, I'd bloody hoped that t'was you. Can't stand the fucking cold up here one sodding moment longer. Name's Drustan Cranmer, not that it matters". With a hand shaking from the bold he reached inside his heavy cloak and pulled out a bundled scroll sealed with grey wax, a scroll he then cracked open himself. He eyed the contents through before he gave a shrug like he couldn't care less and looked up at Jon. "Oi, m'lord, what name did you swear yourself to the Watch by?"

"Jon Snow" he answered, not understanding what was going on.

"And how much exchange has youse had with the South since you went a'ranging, lord Snow?" Drustan asked further, to which Jon shook his head and answered that he had had none. "Well, you're in for a surprise, aren't you? Now then" the man cleared his voice in a practiced manner, having served as the personal herald of Smalljon Umber, the Greatjon's son and heir, for the entirety of his campaigning in the South under the Stark banners. And what he then said shocked all around him.

"Herein follows a proclamation made by king Robb Stark". Jon's eyes shot open in shock, and all could see that commander Mormont was growling in rage like the beast on his old shield would have had it been alive, having already figured out what was about to happen. "'Let it be known, to all and sundry'" the herald went on "'that his Grace's baseborn brother, Jon Snow, son of the late Eddard Stark, has for his duties and his loyalty to his House and his Lord earned the right from his liege for all to recognize his noble blood. From this day henceforth and until the end of time he shall be known to all as Jon Stark, equal in status to his trueborn brothers and sisters in blood, inheritance and honour. Let it be known also that the holding of the Whispering Woods, two and a half square miles of land north of Riverrun, is bequeathed onto Jon Stark and his descendants from this time until the end of time to tend to and do with as they please. Lord Jon Stark is hereby ordered to install himself at his King's side and aid him in these times of warfare and strife'".

The herald cleared his throat again and rolled up the scroll, finishing with proclaiming its contents with practiced ease. "So decrees king Robbard Stark, the first of his name, Lord of Winterfell, King of Winter and of the Trident, High King of the First Men and the Sword of the North". He paused and took in the heavy silence around him, his lower jaw trembling at the could as he looked at Jon, puzzled. "You know m'lord, it's just a whole lot of empty woodlands in the middle of sodding nowhere" Drustand shrugged. "The Whispering Wood, that is. Doesn't even have keep on it or anything, except for this ruined fucking pisshole. A little symbol of a thing I guess, to make you seem important and what not-"

"I know bloody well what it means!" Jon shouted back at the insipid man, wanting some silence to take in this moment. No. It hurt his heart, this all did. He had just sworn himself fully to the Night's Watch, from that night and all nights to come, in heart and soul, and to now be offered everything he had ever dreamed of… that hurt, more than any sword or Wight's hands. And he had seen the Others, and the dead that walked. "I cannot-"

"Of course he bloody well cannot!" Jeor Mormont thundered past him, squaring up to the rider, huffing like an irritant beast that had just been Robbed of its dinner. "This is a man of the Watch! He's sworn an oath to-"

"Oi, mate, maybe t'wasn't clear and my words muddled" Drustan's face darkened and his hacking of teeth stopped. "The King just ordered him to get his lordly arse back south. M'lord Umber didn't ride like a sodding demon through half of Westeros fetching the man only to be turned away. And I didn't come out into this godsforsaken frozen hell for nothing. Here!" he reached down into his saddlebags and pulled out another scroll, this one sealed as he handed it on to the Lord Commander. "He's offering you his terms-"

"Give me that!" Jeor tore the paper from the herald's hands, broke the seal and eyed it through. Slowly his snarling face morphed into a wry smile of acceptance, and so he handed the scroll back to the herald. "Is this true?"

"Aye, not a word of a lie. It all waits for you back at Castle Black, Lord Commander" Drustan answered before he himself took it up and began to read. "'King Robb Stark has decreed to all and sundry that he grants onto the Night's Watch ten wagons of barely, twenty bales of hey, a hundred pounds in silver and half a hundred riding men from his army, and their horses, for the Lord Commander to use as he will. He furthermore loans the aid of the builders of House Stark to them for a year and a day to help them tend to the castles of the Night's Watch. He expects, in turn, their good friendship and the safe return of his brother, Lord Jon Stark, to the South. So decrees king Robbard Stark, the first of his name, Lord of Winterfell-' and so on and so forth, you know the rest".

"Such a thing's never been done before, Snow" Mormont looked to Jon earnestly, eyes narrowed and grim face all tense. "But you swore the oath as Jon Snow, and you aren't that man anymore. For half a hundred trained men I'd sell a dozen young lads like you, to brothels and slave pits and worse. Now" he rumbled and pointed up towards Craster's Keep "get your packing and on your horse and follow the fool south. That's an order!" The last one he'd ever receive as a brother of the Black.

Of all the things he had ever wanted and dreamt of in this world that had been the thing he had wished for the hardest. But never like this. Father was dead and now Robb had ordered him to war.

And the watch sold him, like some sort of mere pawn. For strength, perhaps. But there were other ways to fulfil one's duties than die for them. Never the less it broke his heart and hurt like his soul was yanked from his breast. He knew his duty, had sworn his oath – and now he was cast aside.

"Aye" Jon whispered and turned away, ignoring the stares of his brothers – former brothers now – as he stalked over to the supposed keep of rough stone and shite lumber to fetch his things. His saddlebags, his longbow, his clothes and extra pair of boots, he took it all to his horse. Within a quarter of an hour he had saddled his steed, and he was joined by Ghost as he headed back to the camp, stopping before the Lord Commander on his way towards the herald, walking with a heavy head. "Lord commander" he lifted at Longclaw's scabbard at his hip, but a large hand landing on his shoulder stopped him.

"T'was a gift, Snow, freely given. It's nothing but a sword of crows and slavers if you hand it back" Mormont spoke back grimly to him as many of the other men of the watch gathered close around him, most of them jealous and angry but others smiling at a brother that had escaped the bondage they had all been bound to. "If you don't want the damn thing give it to my sister or my niece. Or make it your House's. A sword's good as any other".

"Thank you, commander" Jon answered him and bowed, and when Jeor offered him his hand he took it and clasped it before he turned and headed along his way, mounting his horse. Astride his steed he looked back over the men, at Sam's and Grenn's and Dirk's and all the others' faces. They were hurt, happy for him, angry, bitter, all of it. He was too. "I'll never forget the Watch" he assured them all. "I'll wake the sleepers, send as many as I can your way. I'll live and die at my post!"

"Go to your new life and win new glory, Lord Stark. Take your lands, take a wife, father a whole litter of children" the Lord Commander answered him before he cleared his throat and spoke up. "And now his watch is ended!" The rest of the men of the Watch raised their voices in an echo of that, and with an unshed and silent tear in his eye Jon waved farewell to Sam and his friends and his duty.

And then, his white Direwolf trundling along after him, silent like the ghost it was named for, Jon turned his horse along Drusten and his escort and headed south to join his brother the king.

All but a few dozen of the men behind him would be dead within a month.

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** Apparently "convincingness" is a word. Who would have thought? Certainly not I.

Nan is never stated to have told any stories about the Greenseers in canon, but she could have, couldn't she? Might as well have. Or maybe she had told those stories to Robb and Jon and the older children but Bran and Rickon had never heard it.

Greatjon Umber didn't ride to the Wall in a couple of weeks. Jon meets the herald around the same time as Margaery rides for Riverrun, but I had no way to make that come across.

The Bulwer stuff is connected to the Reach storyline that comes in later chapter. Most of the history and stuff about the House I'm just pulling out of my arse. But I needed a noble family from the Reach like that, one that would take to Robb because [SPOILER CENSORED]. And as I looked the Reach over I went: Hmm… three of these things are not like the others.

The choice was either the gate in the stone wall of House Rhysling, the spider in the web (no, fucking really) of House Webber, or the fricking Bull's Skull on red of House Bulwer. And I thought about which house's banner would fit best alongside the bears and wolves and chained giants and steel fists and flayed men of the North, and it was a done deal. Northmen have some fucked up stuff on their flags.

Just saying that a family with a Bull's skull for a coat of arms is serious business for almost anyone. If you're not a matador or something, that is. And the Bulwer storyline is going to be in the background and pay off in a big way down the line. Remember: the Dragons have come back, and with them magic. All of it. Even the dark sorceries of a long forgotten age.

Lastly, the Battle of Pinkmaiden replaces the Battle of Oxcross in a sort of hardcored-up version. It will feature prominently in the next chapter. Just wanted to let that be known.

I hope you have enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	4. The Eyes of his Wolf

**A/N:** I just want to state, ere we begin, how humbled I am by your praise and positive reception of my story. All of you, who had Favorited and Followed and Reviewed: thank you. :-)

Now, let's dispense with the chick-flick moment and get on with it, shall we?

* * *

Chapter Four – The Eyes of his Wolf

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

Robb Stark streaked in and out of the trees, padding over fallen leaves made wet by the rain on soft and silent paws. Up ahead he smelled horses – gamey, unsatisfying, hard hooves and bones – and with them, humans. Humans were tastier, though not as tasty as oxen or chicken or… what had that sweet thing been called? The one held in the hand of Summer-Sun Flower-Maid? She who smelled of golden roses?

 _Honeycake, Grey Wind. Honeycake_.

"It's got to be the Mountain" his ears piqued up and turned, noting the source of the sound. Humans speaking. _Westerland accent_. Why was he told that? He did not care how humans spoke, only how they thought of Wolves. "He's the biggest. He's the strongest".

"Bulls are bigger than lions" another human spoke back at the first. Bulls? Like the one who saw green when he slept? _No. Bulwer is not that bull. They speak in images, allegories_. A fool human thing to do. Things were or were not, had been or would become. Nothing was something that was another thing too, except for magic. _And you say humans speak in riddles. I can hardly comprehend you_. "Doesn't mean I'd pick a bull in a fight. If the bull had fangs and claws, I would".

"Well then, the Mountain or our man Jaime?" the second one said, and he found himself stopping for a hint. Our man Jaime? Jaime… The Lion. _Kingslayer_. Lannister. He growled and bared all his teeth. _Lannister_. He hated them. He hated them all. Their blood was rich and thick, but he spat it all out. Bad blood. Bad humans. _They put Father to death_. Yes. They needed to die. All of them. _No. Not all_. Why not? Pups grew up, learned to hate just as their sires did. Kill the pups before they grow teeth to bite you with. _I don't kill children or innocents_. _Focus, Grey Wind_.

"If he ever gets out". Out? Out into the forest or the plains? But they were there already. _Out of my dungeon. That dark place where Kingslayer is kept_. "Loras Tyrell?"

"Loras Tyrell" one human scoffed to the other, as if he was stupid. They were both stupid. Sitting guarding all that juicy horsemeat without even looking at it, as if it could tend to itself just because it was alive. Horses were stupid too. Especially Armstark. "He's prettier than the queen".

"I don't care about pretty. That sister of his is the pretty one" Loras… Tyrell… Sister… Like Nymeria? Like Aria? _Yes, like Nymeria and Aria. He is talking about Margaery_. At the memory of the sweet things, fed by kind hands that could scratch in just the right places and smelled so nice, Robb began to wag his tail. "He's better with a sword than any of them".

"How good could he be? He's been stabbing Renly Baratheon for years, and Renly isn't dead". They laughed, but when the horses, having caught Robb's scent when he was very close to them, they gradually quieted. "The horses seem a little afrightened to you?"

"They're horses" the human scoffed as Robb rounded the enclosure of living horsemeat – _Focus, Grey Wind_ – staying in the shadows and the darkness so that their bright torches and their little fire would not make them see him. "They are afrightened by their own shadows". That they were, but humans were, too. And humans should be. Shadows could kill, if ruled the right way.

"Hush" one human said, rising from the log he had been sitting on with the other human. They were on the close end of a great camp of humans and horses, and beyond it were stone walls, an enclosure for humans just like the fence that enclosed the horses. And it kept them just as safe. _Pinkmaiden. Flying the Lion banner. Traitors_. The horses snorted, whinnied, cried. Afraid of him. Good. "Do you hear that? There's something out there".

Yes, there was. In one smooth motion he leapt out of the darkness and into the ring of light, closing his jaws around the human's neck, filling his mouth with bad blood-

Robb opened his eyes and was back in his own body, sitting atop Armstark in the darkness of the stony ridges to the south of Pinkmaiden, the castle tall on the hill before the small town along the banks of the far Red Fork. They expected his forces to come down the east road, or from the northern passage, if they expected at all. But such was not the case, and their sentries and outlying campers would die before they told the main camp otherwise.

It had been an odd thing, though. One moment he had been looking out over the camp and the castle against the backdrop of the rain-filled darkness, wishing that he could have gone with Grey Wind and seen what he had seen, and then he had closed his eyes and… he had.

Though it was not that clear a divide. One being flowed into the other, merging and breaking apart, until one's soul seemed splintered. Robb thought that perhaps if he was stronger, more powerful, dreamt the green more easily, then he could have completely mastered Grey Wind. But he had been nothing but a passenger in the Direwolf's head, like a sick or wounded man in a carriage or wagon not his own.

He set his teeth and ignored his thoughts. He could determine the root of this sorcery another time. Now there was killing to be done.

Hearing the screams of the Lannister sentry drowned out by the crashing rain Robb Stark drew Lionslayer from his hip. He could taste the blood of man on his lips, and maybe to Grey Wind it tasted rotten and bad but to him it was as sweet as wine. "Now for wrath! No more silence! Winter comes for House Lannister!"

Holding his sword aloft he signalled the charge of his gathered cavalry, and before Smalljon blew his horn Roren Bulwer shouted. "The King in the North!" And from the hills west of Pinkmaiden the North came thundering down on the sleeping Lannister army while two thousand spearmen under the Bullskull banner marched on the gates of the Maiden castle. Again and again, under the sound of the horns and the beating of House Bulwer's horned drums, they called out the name of the King of Winter, and as they swept the spears of the Westerlands away before them the freezing rain turned to snow.

The gates of the castle on the hill closed shut with only a hundred men inside it, leaving the rest of the disorganised Lannister force to die in the cold. Though the centre of the camp and onto the gates of the camp came the Stark King himself riding on his snowy steed, side by side with his enormous wolf, followed by the Lords of the North.

The Lannister soldiers had not been prepared for this. After a gruelling forced march all the way from Lannisport they had been harried by outriders and skirmishers that had cut their supply lines and killed their sentries. Then they had scared off a token force and won a victory, at least in their own minds, and when the gates of Pinkmaiden had swung open before them they had made to camp and await the arrival of Tywin Lannister's army from out of Harrenhall. They were tired, worn down by months of war and the cold of the march, and they had celebrated with drinking and whoring.

Still, the defenders of the keep, the elite guard of Ser Steffon Lannister and a few sworn men to House Piper, settled in for a siege. It was not to be. The North did not suffer betrayal, even perceived betrayal, lightly, and when he rode up to the gate, just beyond the reach of the Lannister archers' bows, Robb Stark regarded it with a cold stare before he raised his voice.

"Clansmen! Umber men! Berserkers! Lift up your axes! The keep falls before dawn!" Norrey, Wull and Umber men charged the dropped portcullis of Pinkmaiden's gate and lifted it up onto their shoulders in mighty strains, allowing their fellows and compatriots to set upon the gates itself with axes and hatchets. The defenders made to fight them off, with spears and with rocks and red hot sand, but the Bulwer troops began assaulting the walls with arrows and ropes and ladders. Faced with enemies on all sides the defenders faltered quickly, all the while the Northern cavalry slaughtered the few remaining Lannister footmen that didn't manage to escape to the east down the main roads, fleeing hand over foot towards Harrenhall and the mighty Tywin.

Once the gates had fallen and the wall been taken Robb ordered the Northerners back and looked to Roren Bulwer. This was his time to prove himself. And Neversleep did not fail him then as he ordered his horsemen through the smashed gate and ordered the keep put to the sword. Servants and maids would be spared, the smallfolk would be set free and aside, those who surrendered would be taken prisoner, but no man with a sword amongst the enemy ranks would see the morning's light.

And when dawn did come the sun shone through the windows of the keep as seventeen guards and the sons and ladies of House Piper along with the Old Piper himself held the throne room. Silence had fallen over the battleworn Lannister men, their armours and livery streaked with Bulwer and Northern blood, and many a hand shook around the hilt of the sword that it held as they heard the shouts and the clamour from beyond the doors. And then a dull boom, a sound of splintering wood. The door had held, but only just, and the silence beyond it was absolute. Another boom sounded, louder than the first, and the doors flew open, broken and splintered, and in stepped the Wolf and his personal guard.

"Do you have to do that all the time?" Dacey Mormont muttered aside to Smalljon Umber, who had, as was his wont, kicked the doors open. "You always do that. Every heard of a bloody axe?"

"I do it because I like breaking things, love!" Smalljon laughed back and slung his father's greatsword of his shoulders, the Gloverblade as light as a breeze in his hands. "Come on, you fucking kneelers!" he roared at the terrified few defenders left. "Show me your hearts and I'll stab them for you!"

Of course, he knew that it wasn't him they were frightened of. Beside Robb Stark stalked his great grey Direwolf, fur all but drenched in the blood of Lannister men and their horses, snarling and baring his teeth in primal fury. "Clement Piper" spoke the Young Wolf as Grey Wind growled viciously. "Your liegelord Tully has named you Coward and Oathbreaker". He stopped and turned his gaze from the old lord to all the rest of the men in the room. "Piper men have been raiding the Lannister supply lines under my command. Your Lord is a coward, perhaps, but not all of you. If you-" he barely had time to finish the sentence before the five Lannister nobles in the room felt the tips of swords at their back and were forced forwards while the Old Piper stared. "Good choice".

"I told my father to muster his courage and stand and fight" Marq Piper, a blonde and proud man whose sword had been sheathed all the while as he refused to bare his blade against the King in the North, stepped forth along with his younger brothers and his men while his father sagged down on his stone throne, his family's ancestral Valyrian steel sword leant against his thigh. "But all he saw was how the Lannisters had burnt our halls once already. He is a coward and a cur, your Grace" Marq stepped past the Lannister prisoners to kneel before Robb Stark "but he is not an evil man".

"Let the man himself say and do that" Robb spoke up and looked past Marq, and the aged and weary Piper rose from his seat, and on stiff knees and he knelt beside his son before the King in the North. "You've surrendered, and bent the knee – but you're still an Oathbreaker. And you sided with my enemies. With the accursed Lannisters". Robb breathed in hard and though about it harder. "I will not abide Oathbreakers. Hated and accursed are they by the Gods. Clement Piper – I strip you of your lands and your titles and give them onto your son. In the eyes of the law you are dead in all but name. Lord Marq, do you have any holdings where your father can live out the rest of his days in peace?"

"We own a farm on the banks of the Red Fork. We'll send him there with a few good men, see that he's well looked after" Ser Marq Piper, now in one stroke lord of Pinkmaiden and Pinkmaiden castle, motioned to his family and his men, and handily they dragged his father out of the room as they left. Before he went the Old Piper unbelted his scabbard and thrusted it and their ancestral sword into Marq's hands. The young lord stared down on the pinkish steel with a crestfallen face. "Never had I thought to come to this in this manner".

"But you are. Make the most of it". Robb knew that look – he had felt so too, partly, when he first marched south with his father's bannermen. He stood tall as Marq knelt at his feet and laid there the Dancing Maiden, the Valyrian Steel sword of House Piper. "You swear yourself to me?"

"My castle is yours" Marq said then, in the presence of the Wolf and his Northmen and their Lannister prisoners, held back and disarmed by Bulwer and Norrey warriors. "My lands are yours. My sword is yours. My armies are yours. From this day, until the sun sets on my house, House Piper is sworn to the Starks of Winterfell". He looked up to meet the Young Wolf's eyes. "Tully might be my friend, but I serve the King of the Trident".

"Don't be a servant, man" Robb took him by the arm and raised him to his feet to stand beside him. "I could use that sword of yours in my honour guard. You ride by my side from this day on". Ser Marq said that he was honoured and fell back to his new throne as Robb nodded back to him before he gestured towards the Bulwer men holding the Lannisters by the necks and wrists. At his silent order they brought them to a line before him and pressed them down, kicking them to the back of the knees and putting all their armoured weight on their shoulders.

"Your Grace" Seffon Lannister pleaded as they forced him to his knees. "Your Grace! Mercy! Please, I beg of you, mercy! We are knights! True knights! Lord Tywin would give you great wealth is you gave us up to him-" Robb bent his armoured knees and squatted down before the blonde man, looking him right in the eye from up close. "Your Grace…"

"I am Northern, Lannister Ser" he spoke slowly, as if the man was thick or touched in the head and still needed to understand. "Knighthood and tourney are no things that interest me. And I've already got your mighty Lord Tywin's son in my dungeon. Your kin murdered my father. You think you can sway me with promises of coin?"

 _Forsake kindness. The cold knows no mercy_.

"Smalljon" Robb stood and stepped back to draw his sword "show this Southron knight how much the North cares for Lannister gold". And as Steffon Lannister screamed in terror and begged for clemency Smalljon Umber grinned and hefted his human-handled greatsword high up behind his shoulders.

The Lannister knight did not scream for long after that.

* * *

 ** _Jon_**

They made camp just south of the New Gift, and finally Jon drew a sigh of relief.

Allister Thorne had not sent any riders after him. He had shouted through the barred gates of Castle Black when Jon and Drustan were on the far side of the Wall, calling him a deserter and a bastard, and told them that if they had wanted to go South they could jolly well climb back over seven hundred feet of ice to get there.

Right then all hope of every making it over or staying alive on their own North of the Wall had faded. In hindsight Drustan made jokes about it. "View was amazing up there" he told the other men around him, including Jon and Greatjon, as they made camp the night they crossed over into Umber lands. "I'll arrange travels too it when I get back to the Riverlands. I'll convince all the Lords and Ladies to go, and pay me bloody handsomely for it". He raised his hand as if he was tracing words on a banner. "'Romantic occasions for two on a giant fuck-off piece of ice'!"

"That's the bloody spirit" Greatjon Umber grinned as he slurped down the last of his bowl of rabbit stew before loudly belching. Jon was not so good natured about it all.

They had trundled up along the wall for hours, searching for something but Jon knew not what, thinking that perhaps, luck beyond luck, they'd have enough supplies to get to the gate to the Shadow Tower before they froze to death. But then Ghost had run ahead, and Jon's vision had swung around and spun, and he had seen and smelled, in the distance, a small group of people making to climb the wall. Actually climb it, not a thing of mere jest like Allister Thorne had intended. And though Jon had not told Drustan how he knew that there were Wildlings up ahead that were their salvation. The wildlings, a pair of families fleeing the North when the White Shadows came, had agreed to help them over in return for them safeguarding them to settled lands in the South.

And so Jon had said farewell to Ghost – heart-breaking as it had been – and started the climb, but now the silent white Direwolf was again by his side. He had been waiting for Jon and Drustan on the far side of the wall. He must have slinked through when a scout returned, or something of the sort. Bloody anticlimactic, really. The only good things that had come out of the climb had been a new found understanding of how Wildlings – Free Folk – thought, and that his fear of heights was now irrevocably cured. Even the Wildlings had crossed him and Drustan, just after they had touched ground South of the Wall, wanting to steal their belongings now that they did not have to drag them over the Wall themselves. Only the timely arrival of the Greatjon and his Umber men had saved them.

"Wasn't your wife a Wildling, Greatjon?" Jon asked. He had heard that from Lord Eddard – Father, he was his father by law and right now – when he was younger. It had always struck him as odd.

"Aye, so she was" Umber said with a smile, and at Jon's look he chuckled. "No, don't be sad, boy! She isn't dead! She's just not a Wildling no more. She said as much, when I got her with child the first time and I wouldn't set her aside when my father demanded it. 'You've stolen me heart, Jon', she told me. She came to raid my lands and ended up carrying my child. I had never wept before the day I said the words with her before the Heart Tree. And I've since wept only at the times when she's given me my children, bloodied and crying as they were pulled out of her and laid in my arms. Doubly when the triplets were born".

"I'm happy for the two of you, then" Jon offered, and the Greatjon grinned back. They'd be at Last Hearth in a few days, and the Lord Umber hadn't had time to stop and visit his home on the way north. He intended to make a stop there on the way South, though, orders of the King in the North be damned. "Maybe you'll father another on her in a few days?"

"She's not too old yet" Greatjon pondered "and I'll always wanted an even" he stopped and counted in his head, trying to remember how many children he had "eight. I'll show her my new scars!" he then added and lifted his hand less of two fingers, courtesy of Grey Wind, his glove cut and stitched over to cover the stumps. "That'll really get her going!" They all had a good laugh at that, Jon too in spite of his dark mood. "You see anything beyond the Wall that bears repeating, Jon Stark?" Umber then asked, fishing for a story to occupy their time, and Jon hesitated.

"No". Not yet, at least. Maybe to Robb, but not to them, who lived in the shadow of the Wall. That would only serve to frighten them unnecessarily, even if the Others came. His former brothers could handle them. At least he hoped so. "There are wild lands there, untilled and unworked. Most of it is inhospitable. If not for the Wildlings and the cold, which almost all there is, it'd be good land to live in".

"And that man made you and Drustan climb your way back to the sensible side of the Wall? Are all Black Brothers that way?" Hoster Blackwood asked, the third son of Tytos Blackwood who had been sent to the North with Greatjon to "unlearn his bookish ways". The lad was tall, Jon thought, seven feet already, but he was all elbows and legs and skin, not a hint of muscle on him.

"I'd say that Allister Thorne was a cunt" Jon said with emphasis "but that'd be disrespectful to women. I'd say he was a heartless fucking shite of a man – but that would be an insult to heartless shites everywhere". He drank deeply of the stale ale and wondered why he was so bloody philosophical about it all. "He was mean-spirited and cruel, but he was an absolutely spot-on trainer when it came to sword play. That's all I want to say about him".

"Truer words have never been spoken" Greatjon had met Ser Thorne, and to say that the two hadn't gotten on well had been an understatement. Perhaps the ire over the time Greatjon had struck the acting commander over an insult towards his wife was what had motivated him to keep Jon and Drustan in the True North. "I almost feel sorry for all the men we left there".

"Greatjon" the newly minted Lord Stark asked, and the Lord of Last Hearth stopped sharpening his axe by the young man's words. "How did Robb trade me for fifty men? How did he manage to get fifty men to swear themselves to the Night's Watch?"

"He granted them land, so his Grace did" Greatjon replied before he rolled his tongue around his mouth and spat out a seed of that dried apple before he went on sharpening the head of his great axe. "Bloody pinpricks, how I miss my Gloverblade at times. I hope my boy takes good care of it. Anyway, his Grace Robb didn't give the lands to the men themselves – that'd be bloody foolish, because Night's Watch and all. He gave it to their families, their children and wives, their closest relations, even their friends if they wanted him to. Two and a half square miles in the Whispering Woods, now dotted with huts and cottages and makeshift farms".

"Aye?" Jon put two and two together, remembering Drustan Climber's proclamation after their travels through the Haunted Forest back to the Wall. Silently he began to bristle.

"They were veterans" the Greatjon went on as he sharpened that ugly and roughforged axe "from the North and from the Riverlands and even some sellswords from across the Narrow Sea, and he had nearly five hundred men filling into his tent once the offer got out". He looked back up to Jon and grinned at him. "They're all yeoman on that land. Your sworn people. Your first bannermen, lad – how does that feel?"

Jon did not answer at first. All of it was so incredibly strange, exalted and bitter and happy all at once, and yet somehow it all felt meaningless when compared to the Others and the danger they stood for, a danger as unavoidable as the coming of Winter. "So my lordship in the South is nothing more than a ruined keep and some farmers?"

"You're the lord of five square miles of a green woodland valley in the heart of the Riverlands, lad, only wee bit of which is settled by your people. The Lordship of the Whispering Woods is yours, granted to you by your liege the King of Winter. Even the most honourable bastards would kill their own mothers for a chance like that at greatness". The Greatjon glared and turned back to his axe. "Show some fucking respect, boy".

"I didn't mean it like that" Jon said back as he looked into the campfire. The others huddled and shivered still, shaking in the cold, but Jon didn't. He had kept watch on the top of the Wall and seen the Others with his own eyes. He hadn't felt the cold in the South since. Everything south of the Wall was South to him now. "I'd kill for my brother even before all this began. And he's given me everything that I want. I'd die for him. The King in the North!" he spoke up, and all of Umber's men muttered along with him.

"If this is the North, I want to go home" Hos complained loudly and hacked his teeth. "King of the Trident, more like!" At that Greatjon laughed.

"We'll be south soon enough" he assured them all. "And when we've delivered Lord Stark here onto Robb we'll go kill ourselves some fucking Lannisters to celebrate". He looked back to Jon once again, grinning like the madman that Jon suspected that he was. "What say you to that, Lord Stark?"

"Gladly, Lord Umber" Jon answered with a smile.

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

For their first few days of their flight northwards and to the North Margaery's little fellowship was hunted by Florent and Stormland riders.

It was as if they were the foxes and the riders were the hunters thundering through the woods, their horses chasing them relentlessly over the northwards roads from Bitterbridge, past streams and glens and villages, their horns following them through all hours of the night. For four days and nights they rode unending, and on the third day Megga and Alla had to be tied to their saddles to keep them from falling off. But Margaery had forced herself to stay awake, to cling to her horse Rosa's mane, to urge them on and to keep their spirits up. The Valemen proved hardy, the Tyrell squires and guards of her and Loras proved themselves strong, and their horses proved quick and stalwart. Day by day the arrows out of the woods diminished in number and the trumpets in the distance grew fewer. And on the fifth day, crossing a bridge over into the Riverlands, Ser Royce, Loras and Brienne had decided that they had run long enough.

The three had taken up positions on that bridge, Ser Royce in the centre with Brienne in her blue armour to one side and Loras in the silver flowers to the other, the Royce men with javelins and slings in their hands on the hither side as the pursuers had come thundering down the far banks. When the quarrels and the arrows had begun to rain down on the knights Loras and Brienne had thrown themselves to the sides of the bridge to take cover – but Robar Royce hadn't. He stood stalwart in the middle of the bridge, the gleaming bronze flashing fiercely about his body in the morning light as the projectiles splintered against his armour like reeds. He told them that none would pass that day. That he and his would end them all.

They had tried anyway.

That had been three days hence. The day of the bridge Margaery had bid her following rest in a nearby village tavern, calling herself Marya Royce to disguise herself as Robar's niece though she really hadn't needed to bother. The innkeep did not care about their names or their loyalties, only the quality of their Highgarden gold. After stocking up on their supplies and traded some of their tired and broken horses they had gone on their way before dawn broke the morning after, and they had been on the northernbound road since.

She had shared a tent with her brother and her ladies in waiting, most of whom had been embarrassed at first at the very noting of sharing a tent with a man, but when they had been assured by Loras and his now so vacant gaze that he held no love for the female form in his heart they quickly grew accustomed to him. During the days he would ride in the front of their procession with Brienne, sometimes speaking quietly, most times giving the road in front of him an empty, heart-broken stare. From Brienne Margaery came to know that Loras had killed two members of the Rainbow guard in his rage after Renly died: Ser Guyard Morrigen, the Green, and Ser Emmon Cuy, the Yellow. He had thought that Brienne had attacked him, too, but by her tears and her sobbing as she held her dead king in her arms he had known that she was not to blame. It was Stannis.

Margaery did not know what to make of the shadow that Brienne had seen. She believed that the mountainous woman had seen what she had seen, but she also believed that she had been grieving and in shock. And a shadow, that looked like Stannis? Either it was an illusion, a trick of the light hiding a deadly assassin, or…

Or it was true, and it was as much sorcery as the runes that protected Ser Royce from the blades of his foes.

 _By the Seven that are One and their Blessed Light, how the fabrics of the world come apart in these dark days_.

On the seventh day since their flight from Bitterbridge, no hunters hot on their heels, Margaery and her ladies rode with Robar Royce at the centre of their following, led by Brienne and Loras and ten Tyrell riders from the van and two of the bastards of Vanderhart who rode for Royce leading the dozen men at their backs. Margaery was talking quietly to her ladies that sunny midday, her cloak drawn close about her to keep out the brisk wind, and snow lay in the ditches around the road, dirty and splattered with mud against the white.

"I saw Lord Stannis, once" Elinor said quietly from behind her in the saddle, the two sitting on one horse to share space. Luckily for Rosa, a warmblood trotter that Margaery had been given by her brother Willas on her twelfth nameday, neither of them were very heavy. "He was a stern man, almost cruel, but he was honourable. But I heard that the Florent man said that his men could-" she stopped talking and swallowed hard, her arms encircling Margaery's waist tighter. "Could… spoil… my lady".

"You are right, Lady Tyrell" Robar Royce inclined his head at her. "Stannis has always been more honourable than that" he glanced to the front of their procession where Loras rode, and hoped to the Gods that the Knight of Flowers had not heard him say that. "He would have commanded the Florents to be civil – if he was the one commanding them. As far as I know, no word came from Stannis that set the camp aflame and turned brother against brother. They were the actions of petty men who sought to take what had been denied them, and who wanted to curry favour with their new Lord. Greedy and honourless, they acted as their black hearts commanded them".

"As opposed to you, Ser Royce?" Alyce Graceford asked from her and Alla's horse, Megga having gotten to ride on one of the mules they had bought in Lambgrove, a small village perched on the farmland road north of Bitterbridge, not even worth to be noted down on a map. Ser Royce looked pale now, his cheeks sunken as he rode, and on that day after the fighting on the bridge he had swayed in his saddle and almost fallen from it, twice. A tiredness seemed to lay over his highborn features, and he slouched under his armour, as if it weighed hard on him.

"I was only ever loyal, Lady Graceford" Robar spoke back to her, a slight blush in his cheeks, almost as if he was ashamed. "My heart was to Renly, but the blood that beats in it is the blood of the True Men. The First Men. And though it has been ages since a High King rose, he had always carried the name Stark. I am a Royce. We Remember". He looked up and past Margaery and her ladies as a galloping could be heard from farther up the northwards heading road, and when Margaery did too she spotted one of Royce's squires – she wanted to say… Farring? Ferrier? – riding fast against them.

"My Lord!" the spindly and crimson-haired young man panted as he reigned in his rounsey and bowed in the saddle towards Ser Royce before he did the same to Margaery. "My Lady Tyrell! I've news!" He had been their scout of sorts, their far rider on the fastest horse. "Of Pinkmaiden! I'm-" he coughed at the road's dust in his throat "I'm not certain if it's good news or bad".

"All news are welcome now, good or bad" the Bronze Knight nodded at the squire. Farthing? Ferret? No, that couldn't be right. Oh, she simply had to ask, or it would drive her out of her mind. "What is it, man? Speak! Cat got your tongue?"

"There was a battle at Pinkmaiden, my Lord, my Lady, my Ladies" the young man stammered out like a – Farling! Now she remembered! Thank the Seven for that! She would have been thinking on that all day otherwise – stuttering mule. "Westerlander banners and armours trodden underfoot cover the land. Five thousand men camp around the castle. They have… they have queer banners, my Lady. Skulls and dead trees and ravens and bears and one, one was a man without skin! And above it all, from the highest tower of the citadel – a white and grey banner! Grey and white, a running Direwolf against snow".

"Robb Stark". Margaery hadn't thought that the Young Wolf would stray from Riverrun now that the snows had started to fall, but she supposed that a little snow could not stop the North. This must be what summer was like for him. She held back a smile from her lips, thinking on how good it would be to see that earnest and handsome but blushing man and his darling Direwolf again. Partly it was not a good thing, for she looked down on her black riding dress and saw that the hems were still discoloured by Florent blood and greyed with the dust of the road. "None of us are fit to see the Direwolf as we are now" she proclaimed as she swept her eyes over her dirtied little following. "We stop, find a stream, and all bathe and put on our finest clothes! He will know we are not mere refugees coming to beg for sanctuary!"

They complained, of course, for the waters of the steam they found were fast flowing and cold, but Margaery brokered no disobedience. And despite them being Loras's and Royce's men they all headed her, washing their bodies and their hairs and cleaning their armours. Loras stood guard while she and her ladies bathed, for properness's sake of course, and while Alyce dried her hair and made it as fine as she could with what little brushes and combs she had Megga and Alla found her another riding dress – a Highgarden velvet gown in the black of mourning, with gold vines and roses crossing and dotting the dark fabric – and a green and gold cloak to wear over it. Only when all of her following looked their finest did she allow them to carry on. They were mere hours away from Pinkmaiden, and she would have them look like the princes and princesses of the Reach.

 _Beauty is a weapon, my dear_. Grandmother had always said that, a lesson to take to heart amongst so many others. _It bites sharper than any sword and is remembered longer than any flame. But it is fleeting. Use it while you have it, and awe those without it_.

Pinkmaiden was not what she had expected.

Once the castle had been great. Astride a hill it looked out over the Red Fork, its towers still high and proud, but its once so stalwart gates had been splintered and smashed, and sections of the walls of the inner keep had tumbled in on themselves after the Lannisters had burned it the first time. The town beyond it, along the distant banks of the river, was still spotted with burnt down buildings and scorch marks, but now that the Lannisters were gone rebuilding had started, and builders climbed all over the walls of that keep. As Margaery and her following, Edric riding with Loras, urged her horse forwards along the road she looked down to see flecks of red and gold amongst the trampled muddied grass. Red banners baring the Lion rampant, stomped into the ground by steeled hooves and marching feet. She shivered at the sight. _Never will I let that happen to the Golden Rose_.

" _-and his sword red like lions long gone_ ". Song drifted from the camped men along the road towards the castle gates, hardy northmen in ragged furs and chainmail and leathers gathered around queer banners, either ignoring them for drinking and singing or staring at her and the banner Brienne carried, the green and gold of her own golden rose in profile. Margaery's own banner.

Garlan and Loras all had their own personal crests, so why could she herself not have one? " _And the stars in the night were the eyes of his wolf, and the wind itself was their song_ ". The singing kept on though, and though the voice of the singer was a little rough the hand playing the lute to it was very skilled indeed. The song ended in a wolf-like howl, and when she passed the origin of that song, camped right by the side of the road, she urged her horse to stop and dismounted.

Around an unlit campfire, lazing around in the late day as they had no orders, rest a few of the Stark soldiers – she thought the books mentioned the term "bannermen" a lot when it came to the North – and the one that led them was a woman who rose and turned hurriedly to Margaery. "M'lady!" that armoured woman bowed like a man, the axes at her chainmail covered hips jagged of edge and terrible to behold. "Oi, you lot, behave yourselves!" she bit over her shoulder at the others around the fire, and they climbed hurriedly to their feet and bowed awkwardly to Margaery and her following. "To what do we owe you company, m'lady…?"

"Margaery Tyrell of Highgarden" she smiled at them and urged them to stop bowing and scraping. "I must confess that I heard your minstrel" she looked to the man by the back of the group by the wall of their thick hide tent, who had bowed in a flourish above his lute before he sat down again and kept on strumming the cords. "He sang something… I can't seem to remember ever hearing that song before". And as years of her life had been spent in lessons of music, of instruments and singing and the history of song, that made her both miffed and curious.

"It's called 'Wolf in the Night', my Lady" the minstrel, speaking with a Riverland flat accent that wasn't all that pronounced and could probably not have been noticed by anyone with a less good ear than Margaery, inclined his head. "I wrote it to commemorate the victory of our King Stark over the Lannisters and House Piper".

"Cursed fucken' oathbreakers, those" one shaggy man spat at that, one with a Northern accent even thicker than that of the giant that had accompanied Robb at Bitterbridge… Smalljon, was it? "But I still don't see what you're on about, mate, so I don't" that shaggy man with the enormous pike by his seat looked with narrowed eyes at the minstrel. "'Stars in the Night'. Pah! It was fucken' raining and snowing, so it was!"

"It's simply enhancing the truth, my musky mountain mate" the minstrel jested back with a smirk even while he disinterestedly plucked at the strings of his lute, sending soft music out into that late day. "Highgarden… It lies at the heart of the Reach Proper, the land the Northerners once called 'the Mander‑lay', giving the new name to House Manderly of the White Knife".

"Forgive them, m'lady" the woman in the bear pelt and chainmail dress who seemed to lead them said in an attempt at apology. "Tragnorn is a mountain clansman, thus thicker than the rock that birthed him, and Rymund the Rhymer is a poof and a fop. Though at times there's been a little prophecy in his songs-" she studied Margaery's face close. "You disbelieve, m'lady? Don't believe in prophecy?"

"I believe that only the Seven knows the fate of men" she told that northern bear of a woman, who crossed her thick arms before her massive bosoms and cocked her head sideways. "And that the Stranger is the only one that knows our deaths. I take it you do not?"

"The Gods speak to some, some men and some women, some noble and some vile, m'lady" the bear woman stated bluntly, in no way wary of offending Margaery's religious or cultural sensibilities. "They speak often of late. In dreams and in the red leaves of the Weirwoods. They speak of lands that burn beneath the eyes of the heart trees. They speak of the Wolf who brings the snow. His name is Stark, the King of Winter. The King in the North!" And at her shouted proclamation those around her took up the call, booming out the same, and the shout spread onwards and outwards all throughout the camp. "The King in the North! The King in the North!"

"That will become very tiresome very quickly" Loras muttered aside to Brienne atop his horse, and the blonde and freckled woman turned to answer before a clamour and a ruckus from beyond the splintered castle gates, horses screaming in fright, and then, leaping silently down that slope, a wolf the size of a knight's charger came running. "Blast! It's that Stark's beast".

Margaery, on the other hand, said something quite different as she left the men under the black bear flag and her own following behind. "Grey Wind!" she called out, and the giant wolf came to her, frightening her horses and almost making Rosa prance and throw Elinor off her back. But the Direwolf cared not for horses then, as he bounded to Margaery and danced all around her in a circle, baying softly as his tail wagged and whipped up a fanning wind. "Hello" she smiled at the great beast and reached out to him, and he kissed her hand in the way of dogs after he had sniffed her. Then he sat, his head to height with hers, and let her scratch him behind the ears.

And as the following of that wolf rode out of the splintered gates of Pinkmaiden Rymund the Rhymer looked on the wolf and the princess, and his eyes turned up to the banner held by her brother. The golden rose of Highgarden. "The wolf that Kissed the Rose" he muttered as his comrades stared at Margaery. "All of you, shut up!" he snapped at no one in particular as he closed his eyes and began to run his hands furiously up and down his lute. "I'm composing a bloody masterpiece here!"

Grey Wind didn't as much as look back at the approaching riders even as the men and women of the camp lifted their spears and swords and cheered at his passing. Margaery did, however, and there she saw the King of Winter riding with a few bodyguards and sworn lords, his plate armour traded for leathers and furs and his hair flowing freely from an uncrowned head.

"Grey Wind!" Robb Stark chasticed as he, for once, ignored the cheers of his soldiers and unhorsed while his white and black steed was still moving, landing with both feet on the ground before Margaery and his Direwolf. "Don't suddenly run off like that!" he complained at the beast, who simply turned his head at his master and lolled his tongue out of his mouth. "Fool beast" Robb muttered and laid and arm around the Direwolf before he turned fully to her. "Lady Margaery! I hope he's not accosting you".

"He's been a perfect gentleman, though a little eager" she laughed and mothered the wolf, who huffed into Robb's face hard enough to blast his hair back from his sweaty face. "Did I catch you at an inopportune time, your Grace? I hope I was not disturbing you".

"Not at all. I was fencing with Smalljon" Robb told her, smiling back at her smile with a soft blush in his cheeks that wasn't all due to his strenuous exercise. "He must have smelt you from afar, Lady Margaery. He still remembers your scent and the honeycakes you gave him".

"Unfortunately I am fresh out of those!" Margaery laughed, and Robb chuckled with her, the laugher as if pulled out of him at how Grey Wind's ears turned down and how he lowered his snout to sullenly sulk at her words. "And I doubt that I smell of anything but horse at the moment. Oh, don't you be sad, my brave wolf" Margaery lifted at Grey Wind's muzzle and tickled at his whiskers. "I'll have Megga make some for you" she leant in close to his giant ears and added in a whisper "if she doesn't eat them all herself first!"

Grey Wind snorted hard and wagged his tail. "He thinks that you are witty and amusing, Lady Margaery" Robb Stark translated the actions of the Direwolf for her, but he realised that he needn't had. As he watched her and his constant canine companion lean on each other his face slowly began to fall. Margaery wondered if she had done anything to displease him or make him sad, but when he parted his lips and spoke she knew that he was saddened for her sake. "I heard about Renly" he told her earnestly, and she knew that he had noticed her black mourner's garb. "I… he and I had our differences, but I respected him, and he seemed like a man who wanted to do right. By his people, and by his House and yours".

"He was one of the kindliest kings who ever walked upon the soil of this earth" Margaery replied as she inclined her head and accepted the condolences as befitted a queen – though a real queen she had never been. Still, even though their marriage had been cold, she was saddened at Renly's death. More so for her brother's sake than his. "His death… Stannis ordered it, and a knife in the dark did the deed. The Stormlands and houses Meadows and Florent turned the very same day we heard of it. They… they came after us, your Grace". She considered widening her eyes and giving him a puppy-eyed stare to warm his heart, but for some reason she knew that this man responded best to sincerity. And she found that she did not want to be false to him. "My brother and I - we had no recourse but to flee north, with only a few of our loyal swords. We have been riding since-"

"Say no more, my Lady" Robb urged her and bent his head deeply, as much a bow as the King in the North would ever give anyone. "You will have sanctuary at my court. And I condemn Stannis Baratheon. I name him murderer, Kinslayer, Kingslayer. Accursed is he and his line, until the end of time". Margaery had the feeling that something of momentous importance had occurred, going by the way all those within earshot who followed the Old Gods echoed "Murderer, Kinslayer, Kingslayer. Accursed is he and his line, until the end of time" as they bent their heads and put their hands above their hearts. _Northern customs. A fey folk, truly_. "Lord Marq!" Robb Stark turned to his followers, all still on horseback in defiance of southern regal protocol.

"You are both Brave and Beautiful, lady Margaery" a tall blonde man, who had ridden just behind Robb on his way together with a man of wild black hair and beard who wore a greatsword and a plaid cloak, bent his head when Robb addressed him. "House Piper stands at your service. Pinkmaiden shall be your home away from your own, for as long as you wish it to be. Our halls are yours, our hearths are yours, our ravens are ready to fly on your command".

"Thank you, Lord Piper, your Grace" Margaery curtsied and smiled, and Robb blushed as he smiled back at her. She had to admit… it was cute. "Thank you, Robb" she told him quietly, and she all but reached out to lay her hand on his arm.

"I am glad to see you well, Margaery" he told her as Elinor led her horse up to her and she made to mount Rosa, but without a set of steps she had to take both of Elinor's hands to try and lift herself up. Then suddenly the ground disappeared under her feet but for a single sturdy patch under the heel of her right slipper, and a strong arm lifted her into the saddle. "There you are".

"Thank you again, Robb" she smiled at the King of Winter as he stepped back and away from Rosa, the warmblood mare regarding him suspiciously like an intruder. "I, and House Tyrell, are in your debt".

"You owe us nothing, Lady Margaery" Robb told her as he went to mount his own horse, which was standing to the side of the road munching on grass with vacant, glassy eyes. "Gifts freely given. Come!" he turned his white steed around and raised his voice, and as the sunlight glinted off his red hair he seemed every inch the king to her. "Tonight we eat to your safety, and drink to Renly's memory!"

And as they rode after the King of Winter, towards the smashed gates of Pinkmaiden, Elinor leaned in close to Margaery and whispered into her ear. "Well, he seems like a good sort of man".

"Yes" Margaery whispered back, watching the back of Robb Stark's head. "That he does".

That night they had a small feast in the great hall of Pinkmaiden, Margaery and her little fellowship as well as one or two of the Lords under Robb's command as well as their retinue. She learned that night that the Northerners favoured dark beers and braggot, a blend of mead and ale, over wine, and that their eating habits the defied the conventions of the south with cavalry foods and lordly dishes. The dark breads, hearty stews and meats and beets and roasted vegetables dripping with stock and gravy did not suit her tastes all too much, but there was this one thing that she did favour – an odd shortbread, sweet and pale, with some hint of lemony flavour to it.

"Pine cakes, made by one of Galbart Glover's bakers" Robb told her, as he was seated next to her at the seat of honour at the high table, her brother and all her ladies at her other side while Lord Marq sat on Robb's right. "Beet sugar, flour, butter and the tips of spruces. We have it sometimes at Winterfell, though it's all they ever eat at Deepwood Motte". Margaery nodded to him as she smiled around the food in her mouth – she had lived on that horrible jerky and stale bread provided by Ser Royce and his men for too long – and looked with furrowed brow past Robb Stark at the four people sitting to the right of Lord Marq. "He's the one with the, ehm, iron glove on his banner".

"The glove of Glover" she noted, as there were four lords and a banner behind each. One was a chained giant, before which that giant with the braided red hair and beard called Smalljon sat, along with a dark, tall and bearded but otherwise unremarkable fellow in front of a steel fist on red and a muscular old woman with grey hair in heavy furs and a huge mace at her side in front of a black bear on green. Most of Robb's other lords were away, the Bullwers and the Boltons and the Blackwoods and a dozen other houses she could not recall beating back Lannister occupations of smaller castles and towns. Many men followed this King in the North, and- "What in the light of the Seven is that?"

"What?" Robb wondered, craning his head around to try and see what she saw. "Oh, that's Maege Mormont. I think you met her lass earlier, Lyra. I know it's rare for women of the South to take to warring, but it's still common in places in the North, and Bear Island-"

"No, not her" Margaery shook her head. "The ordinary looking fellow with the face-scar-"

"That's Kase Brineborn, sitting in for the men of House Hornwood" Robb told her, still a little confused. "The Lord Halys died at the Green Fork, and the heir to the house, Daryl, was killed by the Kingslayer. It's a spot of a succession trouble, that, but I haven't had time to tend to it-"

"What is that thing he's sitting in front of, on that orange-tenny banner?" she wondered further, narrowing her sight at the obviously fictious animal, wondering what in the name of the Seven Hells it was supposed to be. "It looks like a cross between a stag" she furrowed her eyebrows together as she thought hard on it "and a bear".

"It's a moose" Robb Stark said back levelly. She turned her head to him, and he was looking at her curiously. "What? You don't have them in the south?"

"It's an actual real animal?" she wondered aloud, crinkling her eyebrows together, and Robb's smile grew strained as if he was trying to hold back a chuckle. "Oh, please do not, your Grace – I have never seen one of those things before!" At that he could contain himself no longer and burst out laughing, at which point she began laughing too, and there was a shift in the room as everyone turned to see what she and the King were laughing about. "Moose!" she tasted the word on her tongue. "Moose! Gods, what a ridiculously stupid name for an animal. It sounds like something cattle would say!"

"Oh, they are all over the North, Lady Margaery" he assured her as his laughter, deep and rich just like his voice and tender as music to her ears, faded into a chuckle. "Sometimes they come up to the walls of Winterfell, grazing as they do. Dangerous bloody things, huge and ill-tempered. Some of the clansmen ride the things – can you believe it? And when you go hunting in the North, Moose is what you're most often to look for".

"I see" Margaery noted. She had never heard about creatures like that. What far, few and wondrously different land the North must truly be. She leant in against his finely carved chair and asked in a low tone. "How do they taste?"

"Badly" Robb told her just as quietly, their eyes meeting for a few seconds before they burst out laughing once again. _Blessed be the Seven, how good it feels to laugh once again_. And going by the looks the Northerners in the hall were giving her, of surprise and suspiciousness, it was something the Young Wolf rarely did. It was odd. Everyone kept telling stories about all the battles he had won and all the Lannister men he and his wolf had slain, but all she saw was a young man, laughing, courteous and kind. And then, in a shift, it was as if he remembered himself and put the crown back on his head as the smile died on his lips.

That moment came when Ser Royce, in his full Bronze regalia with a teal cloak hanging from his shoulders, his bronze helmet under his arm as he stood from his seat and rounded the honours table to kneel at the foot of the dais on which that table was raised. "Your Grace" he spoke, and his tone cut through their joy as he knelt. "I have come to you to pledge my service-" he paused before he began anew in a manner better suited to the King in the North and the traditions of the First Men. "To swear my sword and my arms to you and the banner of your House. Before the coming of the Andals the Kings of Runestone counted the Starks of Winterfell as their allies and friends. Could you find it in your heart to think the same of me, your Grace?"

"Royce and Stark has always been at good standing with each other, Robar" Robb stood from his seat and towered over the rest of the hall without even needing to be tall to do it. "My father thought yours one of the best fighters that ever lived. Ser Royce… me and mine, we have no knights and are not anointed in the light of the Seven. Could you swear yourself to me knowing that?"

"It matters not to me if you are a knight or not, my King. I am your man, your Grace. Without hesitation, without reservation". He drew his sword from his hip and laid it on the floor before Robb, tip pointing towards him. "If you would grant me the honour, I would happily serve in your Kingsguard".

"I do not need guards and wardens in this war – I've enough of those already, and when Kings fight vows are broken readily – but I do need friends at my back in my honour guard. Rise, Robar Royce" Robb urged, and with his hand he bid the knight of the Vale to stand before he reached for his cup of wine. Robb drank sparsely, Margaery had noted, though when he did he drank only of the wine he had taken from Lannister stores. More for the sake of conquest and victory than the taste or the act of getting drunk. "Royce, for escorting the Lady Margaery to safety I drink to you. To Royce!"

"To Royce! To Robb Stark and the Lady Margaery!" Galbart Glover raised his glass instead to his king and drank deeply, and it seemed to her that the Northerners drank more readily the praise of their King than that of a man they did not know. Yet still Ser Royce smiled, and standing there she wish to know what he thought.

What was his endgame? What was it that he sought from Robb Stark that made him so desperately seek his favour?

She would not have her questions answered that night. She and her ladies retired early, tired after their harrowing journey, and Loras came with them while Brienne stayed with the Northerners to speak with the Mormont women. Margaery was glad to see that was Elinor back to her old self as she jested and flirted with the Cassel and Glenmore men that were their escort to a wing of the castle that had remained untouched by war and siege. Their quarters were as warm as they came in the Riverlands, if a little sparsely furnished even after Margaery's packing was taken there, and Elinor was helping Margaery comb out her hair before they went to bed when Loras barged in.

"I must admit that I doubted, sister" he confessed, a cup of wine still in his hand as he loitered over to the glassed window of her designated apartments after he threw the door closed behind her, glaring darkly out over the Pinkmaiden godswood as he leant against the stone windowsill.

"Loras". Margaery saw the black mood hanging over her brother like the clouds over Storm's End. She looked over her shoulder at Elinor. "Go see if Megga and Alla are all settled in, will you?" After her friend had left Margaery stood from the side of her bed and approached her brother, making sure that she was far from him when she spoke in case he flew into one of his rages. A year ago she wouldn't have been so apprehensive, but now she was. She remembered what had happened Ser Cuy and Ser Morrigen. "Loras, you need to sleep". He shot her an angry glance. "Willas and Garlan would tell you the same. We have been travelling for long, and we have many ravens to send tomorrow. The King has set his rookery at our disposal-"

"Renly was the real king" he cut her off, and she could see the tear trail down the side of his cheek. "He was the best of them. Stark, Stannis, even that abomination Joffery – I'd kill them all if it brought Renly back. I'd slash and I'd stab and I'd kill all the men in the world". His voice broke at the last, a shudder going through his shoulders. "But he's gone. Damn the gods that took him from me, he's gone".

"Brother" Margaery laid her hands on his shoulders, and he slouched under her touch, as if there was no strength left in him despite his knightly training and physique. He stood there, staring at the moon, silent for a little while, before he shrugged off her hands and gave her an empty smile, and she nodded back at him, going back to sit on her bed. "You came here for a reason. You said you doubted me?"

"I did not think that you could turn him against Stannis so easily" Loras expounded on his earlier statement. "I didn't. His father was better attached to his honour than his head, and the Young Wolf walks just like him. Talks just like him, if a little more grandiose. He'd say that Stannis's claim was paramount. But no" he shook his head and gave her a wry smile. "You just twinkled your eyes at him and stroked his… wolf… and he put all his power behind our cause. 'Kinslayer'. The North does not take kindly to that sort of thing. You have a lot of power over him. What you mean to do with it?"

"I do not know". Honestly she did not. She knew that the sensible thing in their situation would be to swear themselves to a royal authority – Stannis, Joffery or Robb – or to just withdraw and wait out the war and ally themselves with the victor. But Loras would never follow Stannis, Joffery was an abomination of incest if the rumours were true, and she wanted Houses Florent and Meadows to answer for what they had intended to do. Perhaps… perhaps following the young wolf was the right heading to choose. "'The Stars in the Night was the Eyes of his Wolf'". He truly was fierce. "Perhaps he could be persuaded to back Edric's claim, weak as it is" she offered. "We need not hedge our bets on only one horse, as Willas would say. We can treat with the Lannisters too if we must".

"You saw the Lannister lions stomped into the ground out there" Loras pointed out to her. "He hates them. I know hatred now, better than I have ever before, and I see it in him too. The slightest hint of duplicity from us and he would not hesitate to unleash his wrath on the South. And I saw his men. They are hard, Margaery, and not just in the comely manner. They will laugh and smile and be courteous, but killing comes easily to men from the North if they are slighted".

"'When a wolf descends on your flock, all you gain by killing him is a short rest, for other wolves will come. If instead you feed him and tame him and turn his pups into your guard dogs, they will protect the flock when the pack comes ravening'". Loras paused and looked seriously to her, wondering no doubt what all this was about. "It was Reachking Garth Gardener, ninth of his name, who said that, wasn't it? He said it about the Andals coming to conquer his lands, but that doesn't make it less true for our current predicament".

"You want to tame the Wolf of the North, like Garth tamed the Andals?" Loras questioned, an eyebrow raised, and though Margaery blushed at his insinuation she never the less looked back at him firmly. "Yes, perhaps this is true. He seems to bend easily enough to your charms. We have all but turned him against Stannis already. But you know that taming doesn't come easily, dear sister. The big one might come easily to your hand, but Wolves are wild. Dogs are tame. Wolves are not".

"He seems fairly easily tamed to me" she noted and leant back to support herself on her palms. "As I said, we need not hedge our bets. We will send word to Grandmother and Father on the morning. You and I should stay here, with Robb, make alliances and friends with the North. Father can send Brightsmile or Garlan or one of our other cousins to King's Landing, just in case we need to turn our coats. I will no doubt have to remarry – after the customary minimum of three moons of mourning, of course".

"Renly's body is scarcely cold, and already you think to wed another man" Loras sighed, and Margaery looked hard to him. _Gods_ , sometimes he sounded just like Renly at his worst. "Don't look at me like that. I do not blame you. That's the lot of women in this world, isn't it? The weapons you fight with are different from mine, but you fight just the same. You must mind your prospects. And out of the two of us I loved Renly dearer".

"I'd say" Margaery scoffed. "He spent our wedding night with you". Not that she was bitter over that. She had been happy for her brother then, just as she mourned for his sake now.

"Yes" Loras sighed and sipped of his drink, sadness in his eyes and vengeance in his heart. "Yes, he did love me better, didn't he?" Her brother had sworn kill that bastard Stannis. He had sworn it on the Seven, the Old Gods, the Summer Gods, the Black Goat of Qohor and any and all other gods in the world, living or dead, except for the Red God. He'd run his sword through Stannis's chest and cut out his heart. They'd see if it really burned with the fire of that pagan god, then. That was why he would cleave to the Young Wolf.

The Lannisters could give them safety, but Robb Stark could give Loras his vengeance. And after a few messages Father would see the same. She was certain of it. But she? She had come for the offer of safety and curiosity for a severe but well-meaning young man who wanted nothing more than to free his people and avenge his father. Robb Stark… he was a good man. He was strong and handsome and a leader of armies. And the best way to tame a young wolf was with a bitch.

"Not a bitch" she mused quietly. "It sounds base. A she-wolf". She turned to look out the window of her chambers and take in the moonlight of the night. "The She-Wolf of Highgarden".

She whispered that, for she didn't want her brother to hear of her idle fantasies. Dreams, merely.

 _For now_ , some traitorous part of her mind whispered. _For now_.

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** No, she's not really in love with Robb. Not yet. I'm going to milk this for as much drama as I possibly can, first.

It will be explained further along the line, but for those of you who are impatient: no, Robb is not a Warg. Not a good one, anyway. He doesn't have the same talent for it as Arya or Jon, and certainly not as much as Bran. He can basically go into Grey Wind, but do bugger all once he is in the Direwolf's head. Okay? Good.

Also, there are a few additions here: Pinkmaiden has no description in canon, and that ancestral sword of theirs is not a thing that is a thing. All of my own invention. Maybe they'll make an appearance later in the story in greater detail, but not right now. The Greatjon's wife is never mentioned, but I thought about an off-hand remark by Robb in chapter two and couldn't help but wonder and expound on it myself. So there, a little extra to flesh out both Greatjon and Smalljon's characters. Still haven't decided on a name for Mrs Umber yet, though.

Anyway, I hope that you've enjoyed the chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	5. A Cold and Loveless Bed

Chapter Five – A Cold and Loveless Bed

* * *

 _Dearest Lady Grandmother_

 _I write to you from Pinkmaiden Castle in the Riverlands. Surely you have heard about the Betrayal at Bitterbridge, but despite it my Brother and I are both safe and sound of health. We have been given Refuge by Robb Stark. My little roses and the Holyhall are whole. The Wolf enjoys the scent of gold on green._

 _A shadow falls over the waters of the Redwine. I know not what to do. My brother and I have discussed a Taming of the Wolf. I seek to know how._

 _With love and affection,_

 _Lady Margaery Tyrell_ , _the Rose of Highgarden_

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

Margaery and Loras set about carrying out their plans immediately. Unfortunately for them, they hit upon a snag almost right away.

"You are betrothed?!" Margaery, followed by her ladies in waiting and a distressed-looking Brienne who blushed all over and did not want to be there, not in the slightest, stormed into fencing chamber that lay in the west wing of Pinkmaiden castle's second floor the morning after her arrival at the Young Wolf's court. The large rectangular room with the smoothly polished dark oaken floors had long been the pride of House Piper, but a tense mood fell over it as the people in it looked to the now prickly Rose of Highgarden. Having stood from his place of rest at the far wall Grey Wind gave Margaery one look, huffed deeply and then turned around so that when he lay back down he lay with his snout towards the wall, shutting out the world. Margaery thought that the Direwolf was wise beyond his years and his species.

Robb, some part of her was happy to see, betrothed or not, was shirtless, stripped to his britches and holding a wooden approximation of a greatsword in his hands, and he blinked after the doors to the chamber slammed open behind her. A couple of Piper guards had guarded the doors from the outside but had been shoved aside by Brienne, and their Lord Marq, sitting with his ancestral blade over his lap as he polished it, quieted in his shouted words of encouragement to Robb in his training. Dacey Morment, Lyra's more slender and much more conventionally comely sister, took one look at Margaery and left the room, dragging Lord Marq along with her.

"Eherm" Robb cleared his throat and looked to his sparring partner, who was an equally half-naked sweaty man right about then, though going by the sight of him must have had a bear involved somewhere in his family tree quite recently. "Top of the morning to you too, Lady Margaery. I hope that you have had a pleasant rest, and that your quarters are to your liking?" It seemed that the Young Wolf was nervous, and thus his voice rose in pitch at the end to of that question though it really seemed more of a statement to her.

"Yes it is, yes I had and yes they are" she answered him impatiently, forgetting every lesson her Grandmother had taught her to instead allowing herself to be like her grandmother for a little while. "Now, what is this I have just heard?" She had broken her fast just a little while earlier, along with her ladies and Brienne in the great hall, and taken to speak with some of the vassals of Galbart Glover, including the aged lesser lord Gregor Forrester, who had mentioned his own son Rodrik's betrothal to a lady of another northern noble house called Elaena Glenmore.

Margaery had inquired about northern marital customs, and Gregor had mentioned, out of hand, that it was not uncommon for northerners and southerners to have double ceremonies, to honour both the Seven and the Old Gods. "The late Lord Eddard did when he married Lady Catelyn" he had said "and our King will doubtlessly do the same when he marries that Frey girl". And that was as far as Margaery hard heard before she watched her plans shatter and fall apart even before she as much as a chance to lay them.

Smalljon stood half-way between Robb and Margaery and her ladies, and so he looked from one to the other, back and forth, blinking several times. Finally, his gaze settled on Robb, at which point he promptly burst out laughing so hard that he all but went blue in the face. Wheezing and doubled over, Dacey Mormont had to return to the chamber to help him out of there, giving Margaery an apologetic look as she did so. "Lady Margaery" Robb Stark cleared his voice and looked past her to her ladies and her bodyguard "might we speak of this later? I am indecent, and in need of a bath-"

"You look and smell terrific, your Grace" Margaery dismissed his concerns with a wave of the hand, still annoyed, and looked over her shoulder at her attendants. "Give us the room, will you?" Alyce, Megga, Alla and Elinor curtsied and took their leave with varying degrees of grace, but Brienne, having traded her blue plate for more simple leathers and doublet, remained. "Yes, Lady Brienne of Tarth? Might I and the King have a few private words?"

"Without a chaperone, my Lady?" Brienne inquired flatly, making Margaery internally seethe at the rules of interaction and courtly life. "Unmarried, with an unmarried man, alone? I hardly think that is proper, my Lady. I will-" she coughed when Margaery narrowed her eyes at her.

"I shan't act without honour, Brienne" Robb inter-cut the stares the two were giving each other. "Do not doubt me, Stormlander".

"It is not your honour that I have been sworn to guard - or whose honour I doubt, your Grace" she added, to Margaery's visibly growing bevexment. "Very well. I'll just go stand over in the corner and – uh – look at the swords on the wall for a little while! Your Grace, my Lady" she bowed and turned on her heel and did as she had said, leaving the two in relative privacy.

"So" Margaery crossed her arms before her chest, noticing absently how Robb's blue eyes shot down to neckline of her gown at to motion before he met her eyes again and blushed, averting his gave to face away from her. "Betrothed".

"I didn't know it'd cause trouble for you not to know, Lady Margaery" he offered, and then he flinched, knowing what that sounded like. "I – oh, bollocks – I didn't mean it like that. I never had a reason to tell you because, and you know, and-" he sighed and slapped his hand onto his brow – a motion that did wonderful things to the muscles along the sides of his torso as he spun back around to face her. "I didn't think that anything would come of it. You were married when I first met you, for Gods' sake".

"In name, perhaps" she scoffed back at him and turned her back to him, walking past him towards the long slits made in the walls along the room, a necessary part of its fortifications as the fencing room overlooked the rear courtyard and the castle gardens. She leant her shoulder against the wall there so she could peak out of the narrow stone slit. Her brother Garlan had once taught her that they were called arrowslits, arrow loops, loopholes, or balistraria, portages through which archers could loosen down on invaders without being hit by answering projectiles. "My marriage was a sham. My marital bed was cold and empty but for myself".

"Renly didn't care for you?" Robb asked, and she shrugged. She wondered what she was doing, talking to him like this, confronting him like this about keeping this from her, as the best thing she could have done was to simply ingest these new slivers of information and plan accordingly. Perhaps… yes, that she could do. She needed but simply seduce him. He was already half-way there. All she needed to do was follow Grandmother's lessons. And hope that she looked like she knew what in the Seven Hells she was doing.

"My family wanted the match, my father most of all" she confided in him, and he made a rumbling sound that was half a bitter sigh and half a knowledgeable affirmation. "I take it that it was the same for you?"

"I needed passage by the Twins to gain the first advantage in the war" he told her shortly, leaning against the cold stone wall on the other side of the loophole like the chill did not bother him in the slightest. "Walder Frey" she nodded, recognising the machinations of the Late Lord Walder "could make whatever demands he wanted of me then, and I would have been forced to say yes. One of them was to promise that I would marry Roslin, his… I don't remember. Maybe she was one of his daughters, or maybe she was a distant relation". He paused and looked to her, and she looked away from him and back out of the arrowslit. "Was Renly not… you've said that he was the kindliest King the world had ever known?"

"The kindliest king, a good and godly man – and a poor husband" she told him then, glad that her brother had secluded himself with the maester in the castle rookery, writing messages to send to Highgarden and Oldtown and the Arbor, and wasn't there to hear her. "I struck him, at times. He would belittle me, speak to me like I was some common slattern, insult my sex. But I'd strike him, and then he'd ask for my forgiveness, as if he was in the wrong. And he was, but I… I do not know if he was weak, or if I was bitter and hateful. Perhaps a little of both, and some of neither. Most things are. But since he never touched me other than like a brother to a sister I never saw us as wed together".

"Wait, hold, what?" Robb urged her, eyes wide in disbelief. "He never touched you like a husband?" She looked back at him, let her eyes rove over his muscle still shining faintly with sweat, inhaling the scent of him from even the distance between them and discovering that she liked it. "You mean you never… never-?"

"Consummated our marriage? No". Out of all things that she had told him, that was the thing that he seemed the most taken aback by. "Would you have done the same, your Grace? Ignored your young wife like that, forsaken your duties as a husband?"

"If I had a wife that looked like you do, Lady Margaery?" Robb wondered quietly, and her cheeks reddened by his tone if not by the words that followed. "I'd lose the war, no doubt about it, because I'd never want to leave her chambers". Brienne, standing by the far wall from them with her back turned, trying to seem very interested in the decorative swords fastened to the stone of the walls by hammer hand nail despite her red ears, cleared her throat pointedly. "Lady Margaery" he was blushing so hard that even the stomach around his navel turned red. _His flat, smooth stomach, where his muscles stretched under sweaty skin_ … _hmm?_ "I'm sorry if I led you astray, even without intention on my part. I should have told you. I beg your pardons". Begging, he? He stood tall and proud and strong. She saw begging nowhere.

"No, you ask forgiveness" she told him softly and reached out across the space between them, laying her hand on his upper arm. "You do not beg, even now. Never. Is that pride, or arrogance?" His skin was warm, incredibly hot beneath her fingers, and she all but made to squeeze to feel – Brienne cleared her throat, and cleared it again when neither of them made to move apart. Again she did it, and then one more time before she was reduced to jagged coughs. "I'd best see to her" Margaery said as she withdrew from him. "She sounds like she's swallowed an entire live sparrow".

"Of course" Robb nodded to her and looked around, staring at her back as she walked away from him, and she glanced back over her shoulder to see his hand replace hers on his arm, as if he was trying to hold to him the sensation of her touch. "I've for fencing for another hour, I think. If you'd I could show you the castle, afterwards. The gardens are quite pretty, even in this season".

"That would be nice" Margaery inclined her head as she patted Brienne on the back, forced to stand on the tips of her toes to do so. "My brother keeps asking about how northern men fight" she added then, lying smoothly and discovering that it left an ill taste in her mouth despite all the practice she have had with clandestine dealings. Why did she not like lying to this man? She certainly wasn't sweet on him… was she? "May my ladies and I stay and watch? Fencing from the North must be so different from what it is in the Reach".

"I, eh" Robb lifted his hand and scratched at the back of his head. "Certainly" he finally decided, and within a short while he had called back his attendants and hers into their presence. And so, on chairs by the wall of the room by the side of Lord Marq, one hand on Grey Wind's furry head, Margaery sat and watched the Young Wolf fight.

Few castles in Westeros had fencing rooms like that one, with shields and swords and lances and banners bearing old and obsolete heraldry fixed to the walls, but they were supposedly quite common in Essos, especially around the noble and the wealthy families of Braavos. It was in that room where the sons of House Piper had practiced their sword skills ever since the founder of their house, a Lysene musician who had sworn himself to the service of Arlan Durrandon, third of his name, King of Storms and Rivers, had built the castle of Pinkmaiden in an age now long gone. The family sword was a relic of that man, Noraro the Piper, the sword with a silver woman in golden veils for a handle and a pink blade tinged with waves of silver. It was said that the First Piper had gotten the sword from a mad Valyrian dragon rider, as thanks for seducing and murdering his rebellious daughter. And ever since the First Piper had stabbed it through that Freeholder Princess's heart the blade had been bound by that Dancing Maiden, a ghost within the sword to watch over House Piper until the sword was lost or destroyed or time itself ended.

Or so, Marq Piper told Margaery as they watched Robb and Smalljon spar, the stories said.

"Come on – show me those fangs of yours!" Smalljon shouted at Robb as the two circled each other, and on his insistence the King in the North charged, their wooden greatswords, hollowed out and weighed with lead down the spine, clashing together in deafening clacks. Dacey Mormont watched from aside together with a man Margaery was called Owen Norrey, another fighter with the greatsword who was even hairier than Smalljon, if such a thing was possible, though nowhere quite as large. She asked Lord Marq about that black-haired man's plaid cloak, to which he shrugged.

"You will have to ask a Northerner, Lady Margaery" Marq offered as Robb, neither as fast or as strong as his opponent, used his cleverness and sense of strategy to work for him instead. He sidestepped one of Smalljon's overhead swipes, having baited the giant into overextending himself, and half-sworded, reversing the greatsword so that he hold the blade in his hand, to hook the crossguard around Smalljon's feet and sending him crashing to the floor. "A capital strike, your Grace!" Marq clapped his hands, to which the Northerners rolled their eyes. "Well done!"

"What's the word, Lady Margaery?" Robb asked while Owen Norrey got him a drink of water. "Sysodam?" Schooled by a maester of the Citadel or no, Robb's grasp of the finer points of southern language seemed a little vague. Margaery did not think less of him for it. It was hard to think little of a man who had, while outnumbered and on hostile land, beaten his enemies at every turn.

"Sycophant" she supplied with a smile. Betrothed or not, she enjoyed his company.

* * *

 _My Dearest Grandchild_

 _I am glad that you are safe. The court is nothing but insipid and bleak without your presence. I received your brother's message. Quite the plan, taming this wild pup of yours._

 _The wind blows whispers to Highgarden. The wolf drinks at towers. He does because he is chained to it. Towers have weak chins. This tower is half ermine, and that is no sturdy construction, pretty as it might be to look at._

 _You know what they say about the flowers of Highgarden. Fertile as the land from which they grow, and just as fair. A rose is a better choice than a tower, always. Convince his pack and his kin of that, and they will take to you._

 _But the wolf is the get of the old wolf. The old wolf never broke his chains. This one seems no different. But this chain is linked to weak foundations. And the wolf has a pack to lead._

 _Stay with the dancing maiden and the wolf. Feed him treats, and he shall lick your hand soon enough. All men are the same, after all, wolf or not. Awe him and his pack, learn how they howl, and they shall sit pretty for you too. Meanwhile we must take care, for gold on red lends hands to many ears._

 _Perhaps the wolf can be tamed. Remember that there is always a price to such things. If you undertake this endeavour it must not fail. Let us not lose our heads over this._

 _I look forward to seeing how things develop. I have faith in you._

 _With love and affection,_

 _Olenna Tyrell née Redwyne, Lady Dowager of Highgarden_

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

"How are the godswoods in the North?" Margaery asked Robb as later, after Robb had washed himself of the fencing sweat and dressed himself in what seemed to her to be much too light attire for such brisk weather, he escorted her through the gardens of Pinkmaiden, and past it into the godswood under an arch in the dividing wall between it and the summer herb gardens. "It must be so very different at Winterfell than it is here in the South".

"Cold" he jested, and she laughed aloud. Some ways behind them walked Alla and Lord Marq, followed Brienne, as their chaperone at enough of a distance to give them at least an air of privacy. "Well, it's a lot bigger than this" he gestured to what was merely another part of the garden with the castle sept at the far side of it, the trees sparsely laid out along the nooks of the path that coiled and twisted and turned in arcane Essosi ways beneath their feet. "This is, what? Fifty by fifty feet? The godswood in Winterfell is three acres of land inside the keep. And the ground" he looked down on their feet and frowned.

"Yes?" Margaery urged on, linking her arm in his. "Go on". It was such a different thing from Renly's, or even Loras's. Through his grey tunic she could feel his muscles, and she had the sense that he had been hard and lean in his early years only to flower into true prowess as he grew older. She could not get both hands around his upper arms, even if she tried. He blushed still, and though it was still adorable she was starting to get a little annoyed at his prudishness. She was just walking arm in arm with the man, not fawning on him or even kissing his cheeks.

"It's covered in old humus and moss over the packed dirt. The ground so soft it's like a pillow beneath your feet" he began to describe it to her, and she enjoyed the imagery almost as much as she enjoyed the sound of his voice. "There's not any paths, and trees all around. Solider pines, ash, oak, hawthorn, chestnut – even ironwood. One of the few gatherings of the trees that House Forrester does not keep. There are warm pools under the canopy of the trees, heated even in winter by hot springs within the belly of the world. When we had been bad, or broken our promises, Father told us to wash ourselves of it in the godswood springs".

"It sounds like a wonderful place" Margaery told him as they went along the path towards the castle sept. "Our godswood at Highgarden is in some parts the same and some not. We have other trees and such. No hot pools, though. Which is a true shame". It truly was. There were few things Margaery enjoyed as much as a good long soak in a hot bath. "You have a Weirwood tree too, don't you?"

"We must, because our Gods live in them, aye?" he gave her a lopsided grin, and she inclined her head. "No. The Gods do not live in the heart trees. They live in all things, in the rocks and the rivers and the wind and all other trees, too. But through the Weirwoods they can see us, and by rustling of their leaves we can hear them. Ours is a giant thing, on the edge of a pool of black water that is always covered with a sheath of ice, even in the depths of summer. It had a stern face, like Father's". He paused and seemed to chew on something, a question he had been mulling over. "You have a Weirwood heart tree in Highgarden? How is its face?"

"Faces – because there's three of them, side by side, arranged in almost an arch". They spoke quietly, and she wondered if Alla and Marq thought that they were discussing more private things. "One's laughing, one's grinning, and one looks like he has some amusing secret he's not willing to share. We call them the Sage Kings, like the ones that welcomed the Andals into the Reach. Garth, Merle, and Gwayne. How so?" she wondered when she saw his look.

"All the heart trees down here smile" he offered at last, a little helplessly, to which she chuckled. The South was warmer and easier lived in than the North. Doubtlessly the people who had carved the faces had been happier, and thus had happier gods. Before the Andals came with the true Gods, that is. "The Reach has an old history, older than anywhere else in Westeros" Robb mused as they went. "Do you think your people would demand freedom, too? Like we have?"

"If I spoke honestly? No". The answer seemed to surprise him. "We have benefitted much since Aegon forged the Iron Throne. And even if such was not the case, who would lead us? The Gardeners were our only kings, and all of them died on the Field of Fire. That was how my House came to be Lord Marshalls of the Reach. And" she brought up something that had been bothering her "why not be a part of a unified realm? Aegon brought Fire and Blood, but he brought peace-"

"Did he?" Robb asked back as if he had heard those words a hundred times before. "Because the longest period of peace in the seven kingdoms was between the Faith Militant uprising and the Dance of Dragons, and that was eighty years. Eighty years, during there were almost civil war twice over love spats in the King's court, and slavers raided the coasts of the North. For twelve thousand years before that there were men in Westeros. You think they never went with eighty years without peace back then?" He was obviously on a diatribe, so she let him finish and get it out of him. "For every good Targaryen King there was one bad one and one mad one. I don't like those chances. The Iron Throne is a wicked and barbed thing, my Lady Margaery. Power like that breaks something inside the heads of men".

"And here I was, thinking that young men in the North spent all their time fighting, hunting, drinking and going about wenches" she smiled, trying to steer their conversation onto something that was a little less controversial and grating. "When did you have time to learn all this?"

"Me and my brother" Robb smiled at her and the memories as they came under the shadow of the sept before they moved on down the pale serpentine path "all of us Stark pups, actually, were given lessons under maester Luwin. We were placed down in front of the books and told to stay until we became wise or blind – whichever came first. I hated it at first, and almost all of it, but history… all those fighters and heroes. I dreamt of them as a boy. I wanted to be like Daeron, the first of his name, and like Aegon the Conqueror. But then I grew up and realised that war is not a game". Grew up? He was as old as her, and she was scarcely of marriageable age. Old and wise beyond his years, most likely. And sombre. Most of the time anyway, but not when he was around her.

"You miss Winterfell" she stated to him as they stopped in the shadow of a birch for a little while. "Do you not? Why not go back there? Your father was well loved – I am sure that others would fight for your behalf".

"Northerners, following a king that won't fight his own wars? My Lady, you do not know us very well" his eyes twinkled as he spoke, and she shrugged. _No. Not yet, but I am learning_. "Aye, I miss it" he then went on. "I long for the sight of those high grey walls. Walking in the godswood… that place, when I am there, it feels like mine. Not that it belongs to me, but that I belong to it. It is there that I feel the closest to my ancestors". Margaery blinked. What a romantic sentiment. She would have expected something like that from Loras, or from the ladies of her court. Not him. "You must miss Highgarden, my Lady".

"I do, though I was there a little more than a month ago". Before all of this madness and warfare started, before she had been made widow without ever being married properly. "My family I miss most of all. And the flowers of Highgarden, the gardens, the fields of golden roses beneath the walls…" she almost let out a sigh at the memories of her childhood, but held herself back from doing that. Theatrics like that were common place in Highgarden, but not in the North, and she had to make sure that she did not look weak. Well, perhaps a little. Enough to inspire gallantry, though not enough to make her seem fragile and fawning.

"Did you have winter roses there?" He asked of her, all of the sudden, and she looked to him in question. "Winter roses? They are, well, like ordinary roses really, but blue like frost, and their fragrance is sweater and more powerful".

"I know of them" She remembered the lessons of Archmaester Ebrose, the maester of the silver mask that had spent most of her early days with her when she was not singing or in dance practice, at her Hightower mother Alerie's insistence and patronage. He had taught her of botany and medicine from books in which all the flowers of Westeros and Essos, and even ones from places in the far east and other lands with names she could not even pronounce, were painted in great detail to one page and had all the knowledge amassed about it on the other. She remembered an entire chapter on roses, headed by red roses, white roses and golden roses, and ended with a strange flower of winter blue of which little has been written. "I've never seen one with my own eyes, though. It's too warm for them here, even in the Riverlands. They do not grow south of the Neck".

"I thought I saw some growing in the Whispering Wood" Robb scowled at that and scratched at his beard, which she had to say was coming in quite nicely. It was a little thicker than it had been when she saw him at Bitterbridge. "Well, it is nearly Winter even here, isn't it? It will soon be cold enough if it isn't already. And I brought nearly all of the North with me when I marched South".

"Well then, your Grace" she turned them, by her arm linked in his, towards the castle-side entrance to the godswood and the gardens. "Tell me about the Houses and great families of the North".

* * *

 _Dearest Lady Grandmother_

 _Ten days have passed since I last wrote to you. I hope that you are well, and that some of your other grandchildren might make the motions of the court less dreary. I, for one, find myself quite happy._

 _The wolf rides out every so often, gone for almost a day before returning. He spends the hours before dawn in council of swords, and reads messages and reports late into the nights. Still he sleeps well now, better than the pack tells me that he used to. His eyes are no longer bloodshot._

 _The matter we have discussed is showing promise, yet no promise. I have learnt much about the pack, though I fear that I will always be an outsider. I have taken up archery to pass the time in sanctuary. They look kindly on martial matters._

 _He is away to a river's run. A trout prince has disobeyed him, and his pack says he is furious._

 _I am confident that I can soothe his temper. Give Garlan and Willas my love._

 _With love and affection,_

 _Lady Margaery Tyrell, the Rose of Highgarden_

* * *

 ** _The Rose with a Broken Stem_**

It was a fine day in Highgarden – but then again, any day in Highgarden was a merry one – yet for all the sunshine and birdsong Willas Tyrell could feel the onset of winter in his leg.

"Brother, are you hurt?" his brother Garlan asked as he saw how Willas winched just as they made it past Perceon's fountain, a large marble construction from the top of which the likeness of the Maid poured crystalline water from a great stone jug onto the topmost of seven tiers of circular pools. Willas's bad leg dragged behind and he hadn't been able to hide how his face had contorted as the pain shot through his twisted and atrophied muscles. He reached out and grasped his brother by the shoulder with the hand that was not holding hard onto his gnarled and gilded sandbeggar cane.

"It's fine, Garlan" he assured back at his younger brother, making the hand on Garlan's shoulder lie flat and forcing his contorted face to smooth as if the ache had passed, but it certainly had not. The cold – it might not be around him, but he could feel it, stiffening his already unmanageable hip. And the things it did to his knee was best left unstated. "A little weather pains, merely. Nothing more". He lifted his cane and gestured down the paved path in between the marble colonnade covered in roses and with vines that they had been following. "Shall we? The Queen of Thorns awaits".

And so they headed down that path slowly, as musicians and painters and artists and nobles of all ages, genders and stations ambled about in the gardens around them, the tiered gardens of Highgarden. Under the canopies of leaved trees still fresh with summer green poets and writers sat, and under canopies of silk ladies and lords held court in the grass and on the marble stone of the plazas in amongst the parks, drinking wine, eating fine cheeses and pastries and holding court as the young danced and sang about them. One such canopy stood on a high and upraised incline, a ridge of green and marble and rosebushes overlooking the waters of the Mander, and after Willas and Garlan climbed the steps, slowly for Willas's sake, they rounded the green and blue pavilion to find their grandmother in there, sitting to overlook the watery vistas shimmering in the Highgarden sun.

She was a little woman now, shrunken and stooped and toothless with age, but her eyes were bright still and she still had all of her wits with her even now, as she sat with several of the young ladies of House Tyrell about her as they played music and sang for her with her only other granddaughter besides Margaery at her side.

"No, no, no – that is not how that goes. It sounds like you are trying to imitate the mating calls of a deaf seal!" she chastised the ten-year old Leona Tyrell at the harp before she looked up to see Willas and Garlan approach. "Go on now, all of you!" she shooed at the ladies around her. "Go torment someone else, and find someone to bring me wine that does not taste of urine like this sour Dornish swill". She snorted as all but one of the ladies in her presence left her. "Sandfly nonsense. Dornish wine in Highgarden, pah! What will they think of next? A Tyrell marrying some Martell whore?"

"Grandmother – as sunny and lovely as ever!" Willas greeted her, and the old woman scoffed when she saw him approach. "Sweet cousin!" he greeted the other woman, who smirked and rose to embrace him, kissing him on both cheeks. "How lovely you ladies are on this lovely day! How fares our esteemed ladies Redwyne?"

"Well enough, with my idiot brothers out of the way". Desmera Redwyne, daughter of Paxter Redwyne and Mina Tyrell, who in turn was Olenna Tyrell née Redwyne's daughter, had always been a bit of a hellion, outspoken and brash and unladylike. Still, Willas knew a brave front when he saw one, even when it was put up by his no longer slender cousin with the vivaciously copper and cherry coloured hair and the freckles dotting her pale skin like drops of blood on the helmet of a knight in battle. She worried about her twin brothers still, he could tell. For all her bravado and swagger, she was still a girl only recently a woman, though she was growing more and more buxom by the day.

"Let's dispense with the matterless twittering. I am much too old to waste my time on such nonsense" Olenna Tyrell snorted and pointed to the two other chairs in the pavilion, arranged to her left, and after Desmera had kissed Garlan's bearded cheeks the three of them sat. "Now, this is how it is: I have two grandsons – not you, whose presence is actually tolerable – held hostage in the Red Keep. I have one granddaughter – seen before you here – betrothed to some lion poof called Daven. Daven, whose father Steffon or Stafford or whatever his name was, I might add, was killed by the man my favourite grandchild has taken up residence with in some silly place called Pinkmaiden. Along with your brother, the Knight of Flowers, a ponce of a name if ever there was one". She looked hard to Willas, her flinty eyes meeting his. "Tell me how to make sense of all this madness. I trust that you have both been in contact with Loras to explain the terms of this charade?"

They had, and so they both nodded as one. "Has Margaery become the Stark boy's lover?" Garlan asked as he poured himself a cup of water from a nearby pitcher. "It is not like her, if such. She always was more for books and orphanages and dancing and singing than she was for boys". Garlan was dressed in simple green and white finery, a sword at his hip as always. He never went anywhere without it. Not as an act of fear, though. Willas suspected that Garlan viewed the blade like an extension of his arm and a part of his body.

"Oh, she is not" Olenna tutted and snapped her fingers at Desmera, who lifted a trey of small scrolls off on a small stand off to the side and putt it on the tensed cloth of the camping table before the two Tyrell princes. "Not for lack of trying, as is evident. She told me to give you her loves – you remember what that means, do you not?"

"That we are privy to her plans as much as you are, Grandmother". Carefully Willas picked up the earliest of Margaery's letters, recognising his sister's handwriting, and read carefully. Like they often did in their correspondence they phrased their messages in code. "A shadow falls over the waters of the Redwine". There was no river or lake with that name – only House Redwyne, Olenna's native house of the Arbor, who possessed the single largest fleet in all of Westeros. Once it had been said that they were the kings of the seas that surrounded the Seven Kingdoms. "That's her way of saying that the war is heading for Highgarden, and that we must pick a horse to bet on" Willas glanced aside to his brother.

"I know what our sister intends in her words, Willas" Garlan replied and levelly as ever and drank of his water. He rarely drank wine or supped on immodest foods, eating and drinking simply, and as opposed to their brother Loras he was the epitome of every knightly virtue, including humility. At least on the face of it. Willas knew that there was nothing the Gallant would not do for his family. "Just like you both I know what she really intends, beyond words and plans" he let the rest be unspoken as he took another sip. "You need not explain it to me. Father, on the other hand…"

"My oaf of a son is all set to march handily up to the Riverlands and start making demands, like the braying fool that he is" Grandmother scoffed and shook her head. "Oh, if he only used that empty head of his. He would know that if you shout at a wolf you will get nothing for it but a torn-out throat and sorrow".

"We need not hedge our bets on one horse or the other right at the start of the race – or that is what I would have said" Willas noted as he looked over Margaery's letter before he handed it on to Garlan. "But unlike many other houses of the Seven Kingdoms, we have no blood ties to the Westerlands or the Lannisters. We have the option to choose another path. For now we are on even standing with both Wolf and Lion – though the more we dally with one side the sooner we close ourselves off from the other". He looked to Garlan, his brow furrowed. "What do you think of the Young Wolf's attributes, brother? Does he stand a chance at outracing his foes?"

"He has secured the Riverlands and dealt the Lannister forces three crushing blows". Willas had been martial enough before his leg was crushed and Loras was considered one of the most puissant fighters in all of the Seven Kingdoms, but Garlan was the one of the brothers who had a true head for strategy. And he was even a more skilled swordsman than Loras. "If I were him I'd drive Tywin out of his lands and place a garrison at Harrenhal. Then I'd root out my enemy from their holes while Joffery fights Stannis. I'd march for the Westerlands. Robb Stark will do that next. It is the only thing that makes sense given his previous engagements". He looked to Grandmother, setting his jaw hard so that the muscles along it played beneath his beard. "If he does that, and if he does not suffer a great disaster or a betrayal within his ranks… Only a miracle can save the war for Tywin then. Stark just might be able to do this".

"We should never have pledged Highgarden and the Reach for Renly" Grandmother had been against Father's and Loras's plans from the start, though it was an odd time for her to bring it up. "It was treason. I warned them. 'Robert has two sons and Renly has an older brother. How can he possibly have any claim to that ugly iron chair?' We should have stayed well out of all this. But once the cow's been milked, there's no squirting the cream back up her udder". She sighed at the folly of the rest of her family, Loras and Mace in particular, before she looked to Willas. "What do you say about this scheme that Margaery and Loras has hatched? Is it doable?"

"What other choices do we have?" he asked them as he leant back in his chair, lifting at his bad leg with both his hands to prop it up better in the seat. "All of them are bad choices, but at least the Stark is honourable. The Faith will set a revolt on our House if we support the Abomination of Incest that is Joffery. It matters not if the rumours are false or not, for the people believe them. And half the Reach will rise against us if we cleave to an outspoken heathen led by a Red Priestess from Asshai".

"That half will rise against us anyway if Margaery's plans succeed" Garlan pointed out, to which Grandmother and Willas nodded. "The pious houses well never let us formalise an alliance with the Starks by marriage. They will not stand for a wedding performed before a Weirwood tree. Mark my words: if the Rose marries the Wolf we will have a civil war on our hands".

"I met Ned Stark once" Grandmother said suddenly, and all three of them, even Desmera who was sitting off to the side to listen and learn how to play the game of courts. "I couldn't stand him. Or the rest of the Starks for that matter. So inexorably grim. 'Winter is couminn'. Just terrible at parties. But he was a breath of fresh air, truly. Even in those days, just after we had knelt at the feet of the Usurper, he never played. He never played at this Great Game of ours. He always spoke the truth about everything but his baseborn boy and that child's mother. That is admirable for some, I suppose. I call it stupidly foolish, and foolishly stupid".

"It rarely matters if the horse is dumb or not" Willas told them his view of things in his customary way, using his breeding of horses and hounds as allegory. "The brains do not follow the blood as often as you might think. A genius might sire a fool, and a madwoman might birth the sweetness of the realms. What matters in breeding are two things: attributes and pedigree. The Wolf is strong. With all the North behind him he is powerful. With the Riverlands to supply him and the gold of the Westerlands ready to be sacked he is wealthy. And he has a good name. A name older than any other now living". He glanced to his brother before he looked back to Grandmother. "Garlan and I seem to be in agreement".

"What about my father?" Desmera spoke up from aside, and the three snapped their eyes to her, making her squirm a little in her seat. "I, eh, my father will not move against the Lannisters. Not as long as I am betrothed to one and my brothers are hostages in the Red Keep. No matter what you try to convince him to do, Grandmother". They considered that, for they had to do so carefully. The Arbor was one of the richest regions of the Reach, and the Redwyne fleet that guarded it the largest single naval force on the western side of the Narrow Sea. If Paxter Redwyne of the Arbor spoke up against this alliance with the Starks and the raising of Edric storm like Loras had suggested they would lose a lot of ground even before they gained any.

"I have friends in Dorne" Willas said at last, to Grandmother's great disgust. "And there have been motions within the Lannister court to ally with the Martells". Garlan raised his eyebrows while Olenna scoffed. "I know. Pipe dreams, the desperate actions of a desperate house. The Martells remember Elia and her children. My people in Sunspear are no friends of the Lannisters, and neither is my friend at Prince Doran's court. I will have them smuggle the boys out while the Imp tries to marry Myrcella Baratheon off to Dorne. Worry not, dear cousin – I trust these people with my life".

"And I trust Margaery's instincts, stupid fools non withstanding" Olenna nodded too. "Then the matter is settled. Willas, reach out to the families of pious faith. Try to mitigate some of the damage that this might cause. Your mother's house might be our greatest foes in this. Garlan, rally the men to our cause. Have the minstrels sing songs about the Starks of Winterfell all throughout Highgarden. I will speak sense to my oaf of a son and advise Margaery closely in this. All in accord?"

"Agreed". Garlan and Willas said as one, and so Garlan stood and bowed to his brother, his cousin and his Grandmother. "And so we declare for Stark". He cleared his throat and made his voice darker in pitch. "Winter is Coming".

"Doesn't sound quite right just yet, Garlan" Willas told him with a smile. "Maybe you should practice it a bit more".

* * *

 _My Dearest Grandchild_

 _I hope that you are well. The Riverlands must be so boorish. In Highgarden we have now songs about lion hunts and dancing wolves. Perhaps you would care to dance too, when you return home. Your brothers and I have made a laurel of roses for you to give to whomever you please._

 _Do remember to mind the thorns, though._

 _Archery is such a brutish practice. It must tear and callous the fingers so. But you do whatever you must do to get what you want._

 _Your cousin Desmera grows ever more beautiful. She has her father's eyes and freckled skin, and she is growing into your aunt Janna's figure. You might be sad to know that her betrothal to Ser Daven was broken the morning before I wrote this letter. Such a brave boy. A true shame about his father._

 _But such is what happens when you go hunting wolves and underestimate their cleverness. It is a lesson we could all stand to learn from._

 _Take care to take that lesson to heart._

 _And if your pup finds out why you have been feeding him sweets, be honest with him. He might not like it, but he will wear a rose on his collar, one way or another._

 _We have no choice otherwise now._

 _With love and affection,_

 _Olenna Tyrell née Redwyne, Lady Dowager of Highgarden_

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

The routines of court were very much the same everywhere, even at a Riverlander castle ruled by a court of Wolves.

Margaery soon learned to identify the banners of the Northerners, even if the details of their personal emblems eluded her. She had Megga carry around a chart and a map of the North at all times, in case she saw some standard that she could not place, but soon it was familiar to her. The Chained Giant on scarlet of House Umber, the Steel Gauntlet on crimson of House Glover, the black sword in a white Ironwood against black of House Forrester, the black Sunburst of House Karstark.

"They are related to the Starks. One of the kings, Karlon, of our House built Karhold on the eastern shore to ward off raiders and slavers. Hence the name" Robb had explained on the third day as they walked the battlescared battlements of Pinkmaiden Castle, as many of the Northern outrider companies converged on the keep to give their reports. She had noticed how the Young Wolf's smile had faded a hint when she pointed to one very macabre one amongst all the rest: a man stripped of skin against a pink field splattered with droplets of red. "Bolton" he had offered as his only explanation. "There are monsters in the ranks of every army, my Lady".

She had inquired further about House Bolton from Gregor Forrester and the ladies Lyra and Dacey Mormont, and while the first one had neglected to talk about them Lyra had spat at the mention while Dacey's face grew hard. She had told Margaery a little about their history – and even that was enough to churn her stomach. Wearing the skin of men as cloaks? Flaying? She wondered at times about what sort of people she was getting into bed with.

"Figuratively, of course" Margaery told Elinor one day as they made ready for their rest. "My sheets make for a cold and loveless bed. Why doesn't he bend to my charms? By the Seven, it even worked on Renly, if not as I had hoped for". It was odd that Robb Stark said that he cared not for knighthood and the southern notions of gallant behaviour, for he seemed every inch the True Knight. He was courteous, pious in his own way, strong and just, and kind. Utterly ruthless towards his enemies and towards even hints and whispers of treachery, granted, but in some strange way still kind. He forced the Westlander prisoners of war to restore and rebuild what they had burnt down at sword point, and ordered his men to pay for what supplies they took from the Smallfolk. The people loved him, as far as she could tell from the hushed conversations of the servants in the keep. And he was oddly chaste, which seemed strange to her. He was no maiden, was he? He had no need to preserve his purity until marriage. But some stories worried her.

They said he spent each evening, after his labours of the day were done with and put away, in the godswood with his wolf and his sword and a few close bannermen. She had gotten Alla to peak in on them once – purely out of curiosity – and it had seemed the same quiet convention as any prayer meeting in a sept. But she had noticed things. How he would turn his head together with Grey Wind at things no mortal man should rightly be able to smell or hear. How he would always know where the Direwolf was, how he would act as if the beast could speak to him. They said that he turned into a wolf on the field of battle, that he was a changer of shapes and a sorcerer.

She would once have thought it all ridiculous. But she had seen swords shatter against bronze armour and wolves the size of horses. She had to simply accept that there were things in the world that defied her previous understanding. What was odd was that how some of the Northerners thought these powers, if he had them, were things of good. The Mormont women had grinned and glanced knowingly at each other. And Smalljon Umber was no better. "They're called Wargs. North of the Wall there's no end to them. They aren't Skinchangers, though. Doesn't work like that. Skinwalkers, more like".

Yet none of them would explain just what they meant when they said things like that, other than talking vaguely about the heart trees and the Gods. She was a Southron lady. She would not understand. Even their units of measurement were different – miles as opposed to leagues.

That did not keep her from trying to understand them and their customs, though. In a sense she made it her mission. And one could accuse the esteemed and noble House of Tyrell of many things, but one could never say that its scions were not driven lords and ladies. Growing Strong – the words of their house, a foundation of wisdom to build on. All knowledge and power started small, but with the right coaxing it could Grow Strong.

So she took to charming the Northerners and not only their King. In a sense, she mused, she was seducing an entire people. _How proud Grandmother must be_.

She took to walking the courtyards with her ladies and her escort, handing out bread and water and fair tidings to the outriders of the different houses, and mingling about in the great hall of Pinkmaiden at meals when Robb was not present or away. Even when he was, she had Alyce and Elinor and Alla and even Megga, whom some of the northerners thought a great beauty in spite of, and perhaps because of, her fatness, do it for her. They made their faces recognized in the court, made friends with all, and though a few whispers called her a leech and a "southron tart" they were soon quieted when they came to know her. They still thought she was soft and too… effeminate, though. Which was something she had never conceived of – a woman, being effeminate? Was that not the definition of the term? – and something that in large part motivated her new hobbies.

She needed to pass the time anyway between long bouts of letter writing and leisurely strolls with the King of Winter, talking about all things and no things in particular, and so she took up certain amusements. Like archery, under Dacey Mormont's stern eye, and hawking. Even racing loops around the walls of Pinkmaiden. Courtly life might seem all the same all over the world, but the Northerners still were a martial bunch. And she found that, while she wasn't talented with the bow, she was not bad, learned quickly and she did find the practice relaxing. Edric, otherwise to spend all his time with the servant children or with Robar Royce and his men, was delighted at all these curious new activities. Soon Margaery would have to arrange for the boy to take up such matters himself, and squire for a knight. How fast he grew up. It made her feel… wistful.

Then one day, perhaps nine days into her stay at Pinkmaiden, word came in from the north-west: a large portion of Tywin Lannister's Harrenhal army, under the command of Gregor Clegane the Mountain that Rode himself, that had been set to join and reinforce Stafford Lannister's second army, had been routed by Edmure Tully. The Mountain had been routed, which had been a great victory for the Northerners – such was the writing on the proverbial wall, anyway, but Robb Stark saw it not that way.

She learned from him, an hour before he rode off to Riverrun to chastise his uncle, that he had known about this army. That was why he had largely stayed in place for what counted as a long time in the war. He had wanted to lure the Mountain's contingent far away from Harrenhal, leaving the defenders there at a third of their strength before he signalled the Karstark and Bolton men to surround the keep and begin a siege while he took the rest of his army and pinned the Mountain in place until the Riverland knights and cavalry, regathering at Acorn Hall after retaking the Riverlands from the Lannisters, could come to slam into his back, riding the Westerland army down. In one stroke he'd take Clegane's head, destroy the Westerlands' main force and take Tywin Lannister prisoner, Gods willing.

But Edmure Tully had ignored his orders and given chase to the Westerland host when they were only a day or two's march from Harrenhal, all of the Riverland army at his back. And now Gregor Clegane and his men were safe behind Harrenhal's thick walls and melted towers, and Robb Stark was furious. With nary more of a farewell than a kiss on the cheek, given my Margaery which caused him to briefly stop and smile, he rode out with the rest of his host.

And he was gone for more than a week before he returned.

It was late in the evening that night, as she had managed to sneak out of her chambers without waking up either Brienne or Elinor, taking to wandering the halls of the sleeping castle. She knew that it was dangerous without an escort and without a chaperone, but she had made friends with all the castle by then and so she was not worried. She found the quiet castle, with the often so Essosi internal architecture and layout, peaceful in the nights. She could walk the balconies in the galleries overlooking the godswood and look up at the stars. "' _The Stars in the Night were the Eyes of his Wolf, and the Wind itself was their Song_ '" she'd sing to the silent trees and the stone walls. She missed singing. She never had gotten a chance to sing for her Young Wolf, had she?

And since when had she considered him hers? He was not hers. He was promised to another – and that fact lay heavy in her chest and bitter on her tongue. Here she had found him, a true knight with the look of a stranger and an abiding sense of duty masking a caring and tender heart, and he was another's? It made her sad. More than that, it made her angry and restless.

It is nothing, she told herself. _I am doing this for my family, for the Reach_. For Edric and the Seven Kingdoms. Even for Renly, even, as strange as it might be, for the Wolf was the best chance at avenging him there was. She was not doing this for herself.

So why did she hear the hum of his voice on the silence, and saw the light of his eyes in the moon?

She walked the castle that night, and somehow found herself in what had been an outer solar attached to the larger guest quarters – almost like the Palace of Guests in Highgarden, an entire keep within her father's citadel set aside for only guests at court – that had served as the Young Wolf's war room. She strode around the dark corner of room, running her hands over oaken furniture and wondering when Robb would return to her, when sounds and a clamour reached her ears through the doors. She snuck around and managed to hide behind a pillar and a curtain by the door to one of the suites and chambers just in time to make sure that she was undiscovered when the Northerners marched inside.

"-and tell your uncle Brandon further that if he keeps up with that, I'll have _his_ ugly head spitted on a pike next!" Robb snapped at what she could only assume was Owen Norrey, and though she was glad that her Wolf was back she lingered behind the pillar at the sound of his mood. "We don't go about start lobbing off the heads of Riverlanders. We haven't got the authority. Have your uncle apologise to Lord Vance for usurping his justice. Give him a bloody horse or something. I don't know, he likes that sort of thing". The clansman bowed and did as he was bid, leaving the room to the King and his Direwolf and three other men. "And now then" she heard Robb all but growl out a sigh. "Is this about that Hornwood issue?"

"Your Grace, my House has all the right" Ser Helman Tallhart, who had squired for Trystan Blackwood in his youth and been knighted by Rhaegar Targaeryen despite not following the Seven, said to the dismay of the Lords Flint and Karstark who had walked with him. "My brother is married to Halys Hornwood's sister, Berena. Her children can have the land and fly the bull moose banner. We should be the ones to tend to the Hornwood for you-"

"I'd sooner let my brothers take my hold and marry my daughter to a Lannister before I let you have the Hornwood, Helman!" Rickard Karstark shouted back. "Karstark should have the Hornwood. My Alys was to be wed to that brave lad Daryn, and the widow Hornwood is Karstark by her mother!"

A fist impacted a wooden surface with a crash, and out boomed the voice of Robin Flint, of House Flint of Widow's Watch, one of the oldest members of Robb's honour guard. "Halys Hornwood was a Flint by his mother, and we've close ties to the Manderlys too! The widow Hornwood is a Manderly! The Hornwood is ours by right-!"

"Enough" Robb Stark's voice cut through their bickering like a burning sword through flesh, and Margaery heard the darkness on his tone as she stood there to listen. "Squabbling like rowdy children and randy bucks. Get your heads out of your arses, my Lords – we have war to fight". Karstark was about to say something, but Robb cut him off. "I will send a raven to Lady Hornwood, asking for her leave to legitimize her late husband's bastard son. If she says no House Hornwood dies in the male line, and you may send leave to your sons and bannermen to court her. But any more of this bloody bickering and I swear to the Gods, I will marry that old woman off to Rickon and take all her lands for House Stark. Understood?"

"Aye, your Grace" they mumbled back, humbled, and excused themselves from his presence. After they left he sighed deeply, and she heard a slump and a thud of a sound. She rounded the pillar and left the shadows to find him sitting there, alone in the gloom, sloughed over in his chair with one hand to his eyes, rubbing incessantly. When Grey Wind lifted his head from where he was laying absently beside the centre table at her approach Robb did so too, and once again there was blood in his eyes.

"What do you mean that you knew she was there all along?" he looked the Grey Wind, who ignored him for wagging his tail and giving a wolfish grin at Margaery. "Stupid damned beast" he muttered as Margaery petted the Direwolf atop the head, at which the tongue lolled out of Grey Wind's mouth. "Lady Margaery" he stood sluggishly from his seat and bent his head her way, to which she curtsied.

"Your Grace" she tried to look as lost and far gone as she could for an instant, before she thought better of it and dispensed with the charade - mostly. "I was out walking the gardens. I took the wrong door by mistake, earlier, heading back to my chambers, and I couldn't help but to overhear-"

"Overhear how bloody precarious my reign is?" he smiled wryly and let out a completely humourless chuckle. "That is always the way when dealing with a people as independent and stubbornly set in our ways as Northerners. We still bow, unlike Wildlings, but we don't do it as easily as you do south of the Neck. Strength keeps them in check – strength and blood". His face fell at his words, and he looked down on his hands. "Gods, I sound like a tyrant when saying that".

"You sound like a ruler who does what he must for his people". The Northerners respected only strength. A man who could not command them would not be their king, and especially these were trying times for them, for it had been centuries since the last King in the North and none were quite sure how much authority he had. She approached him and took his hands in hers. "Do not doubt yourself. You are good at this. They listened to you, didn't they?" His fingers were strong, callused, warm but clean, and her hands felt so small in his. But she wasn't afraid at that. In his presence she felt safe, for he had protected her when her own people had betrayed her.

"Aye. I suppose they did". He breathed out hard and looked up at her, meeting her eyes with a tired smile. He looked so pale and wan, and he smelled faintly of horse and strongly of dust and earth after riding all day. "It is good to see you again, Lady Margaery. After giving half of the Riverlords a piece of my mind and being accosted by all of the Northern-" he looked around, frowning slightly. "Where is your escort?"

She ignored that question. This was too much a godssent moment to pass over and waste on explanations. "It is good to see you too, your Grace" she smiled back at him and reached up with one hand, laying it softly on his cheek. "Are you sleeping well at night? You look haggard".

"I look like utter shite" he corrected, and they both chuckled.

"No" she shook her head slowly and moved in closer towards him, as if to see him better in the flickering candlelight, and the blush that came into her cheek when she looked down to see how close they now stood, half a foot apart, was not entirely acted in falsehood. "You look tired, but strong. Handsome". She inhaled the scent of him, past the smell of the roads he had travelled. His musk all but enchanted her. "Every inch a king".

His lips were so close now, and despite her plans and Grandmother's enticements she felt her heart hammering in her chest. So wild, so fast. His hand, the one not holding hers, fell to her side, holding flat against the waist of her black gown. She gasped at his touch, and as his lips approached-

"My king!" the door to the solar slammed open and in thundered Smalljon Umber, chainmail hauberk still about his body, a scroll held tightly in his hand, the seal broken and his face bitten down hard while his eyes flashed for battle. "My king, word from-!" he fell quiet as he saw Margaery and Robb shoot apart, before a decidedly smug look came onto his face and he started to haplessly giggle. "Should- Should I leave youse two alone, your Grace?"

"Give me the damn message, Smalljon" Robb stalked over to the red-bearded giant and snatched the scroll out of his hand while Margaery bristled on the inside as she sagged back against the table behind her. _So close_. By the Old Gods and the New, this was frustrating. Even Grey Wind was giving her a look of pity. She looked over to Robb, and she saw all anger leave his face as he read the text thereon the parchment. "Is this true and right? Is this the bloody truth, Umber?"

"Aye, so it bloody is, your Grace" Smalljon grinned. "Read and confirmed it with two others. All the scouts say the same thing. After the battle he must've thought to-"

"Muster my personal guard – all of them! We ride at first light!" Robb cut him short, and grinning all the while Smalljon took back the scroll and headed back out the door. Robb turned to her again, and she stood tall then, making sure that he did not see her lose her compuncture over him. It was important to seem interested, but not too interested. Otherwise he'd lose interest if he thought her too desperate. It was better to bait him with a little and draw him in close, according to Grandmother's lessons. Just as he was approaching her now.

"Your Grace" she wondered as he took her hand once again, and for a second, despite the look on his face, she thought that he would resume what they, what she, had started. But instead he brought her hand up towards his face.

"I want the Knight of Flowers at my side for this. 'First Sword of the Reach'. Tell Loras to meet me at the stables before dawn. We're going hunting. Tell him to wear his armour and bring his best blade". He took her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles like a True Knight would have, despite not being a knight at all. "Another time, my Lady".

"My King" she nodded back at him, and so he dropped her hand and left the room in a flourish with a bow, Grey Wind following after with a huff that was almost eerily like a sigh. She looked after them for a little while before she brought her hand to her eye, looking at her knuckles.

And so she took that and kissed the back of her hand just like her had done. She could still feel the warmth of his lips there. For some reason her heart was still racing.

 _Gods, what is happening to me?_

* * *

 _Dearest Lady Grandmother_

 _I hope that you are well. I am glad to hear of the state of Highgarden, and of the songs especially so. My brother will be so too, though he needs not know that you have made a garland for my wolf only._

 _I worry, though. Some flowers must be taken from meadows not our own, and those who keep those pastures will not all approve of it. I trust that contingencies have been made for such occasions?_

 _My wolf's taming is progressing well, though I fear that I have reached an impasse. He still drinks from the river in front of the towers, stubbornly refusing to go from it. Perhaps his taming could progress anyhow even if he stays there, but such would not have the outcome that we seek._

 _Perhaps it is time that Loras and I returned to Highgarden. Send a small escort and some of my ladies here. Give due notice after you have sent them so that our host can arrange a suitable feast to see me off on my way._

 _And send Willas with it, of course. He has always had a good hand with hawks and hounds and horses. I could use his skills of persuasion to my advantage._

 _I will await his arrival eagerly._

 _With love and affection_

 _Lady Margaery Tyrell, the Rose of Highgarden_

* * *

 **END**

* * *

A/N: Well, not that much fighting happened in that chapter, did it? We all need downtime from action every now and then.

I wanted to do something a little different for this chapter, and so this was basically all Margaery, with her brother Willas making a small appearance. It was actually a little hard to write, as I'm coming down with some sort of nasty ear infection.

Chapters will come in their usual pace, though. That I can promise. I can also promise that the next chapter will feature a great deal of fighting to make up for the last chapter's lack of it.

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	6. Know my Name

Chapter Six – Know my Name

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

"You're saying it's the best armour in the world" Lucas Blackwood asked where he was riding beside Robar Royce, near the front of Robb's procession and as a member of his honour guard, as they were riding through the woodlands on dirt roads just south of Stoney Sept. "But it's made of bronze".

"It is older than the tree outside Raventree Hall, Riverlander lordling" Ser Robar answered him in a tone befitting that knight that tired so hard to be pompous and courageous. Robb wondered how a man like that, so good with the sword and so ancient in his legacy, could be possessed of such insecurities. "It is touched by the Seven, and crafted by the Runesmiths of our House in ages past. No harm may come to those of our House who wears it".

"Why then has so many of your house died wearing them over the last five centuries of recorded history, Ser Royce?" Tytos Blackwood questioned, riding beside his oldest son Brynden at the forefront of their formation, just behind Robb himself who rode at a solitary first. It was a relief in a change of conversation, as he and Brynden had been arguing about Brynden's betrothal to Jeyne Bracken, one of Jonos Bracken's five daughters of just as many trueborn children. Brynden had argued fiercely against it, saying that the Brackens were their ancestral enemies, but Robb had all but forced the Blackwoods and the Brackens to make peace. Such truces were often short lived, as they had occurred in the past, but Robb would not have his vassals fighting each other. Which was the very same reason that he would urge Greatjon to betroth his youngest son to Erena, Robett Glover's daughter, as soon as he got back from the North.

He needed a strong and unified North and Trident – and plans of marriages and alliances and war distracted him from Margaery.

He was no fool. He knew that she was trying to seduce him. _Gods_ , he had half a mind to let her. But he wondered constantly to what end. Was she trying to get at him for his crown? Or was she after an alliance between the North and the Reach? Or was she, as perhaps not a friend but at least of a family that in the past treated with the Lannisters, trying to infiltrate his court and put an end to the war? How much of her laughter, how many of her smiles; how much of it were lies and nothing but? Doubt consumed him as he rode.

And it did not help that the conversations behind him turned to love and women at Lucas Blackwood's adolescent insistence.

"There is this one girl" Robar grudgingly confessed to Lucas Blackwood's and Smalljon's incessant prodding. "Or, there was. Alyce Graceford – one of Lady Margaery's handmaidens. We used to walk the sept at Bitterbridge together at night. I fear I might have ruined any chance I had of being in her good graces by not being forthcoming about my escorting of Lady Margaery to his Grace's court. Anytime she sees me now she narrows her eyes and grows cold. Methinks she thinks me a traitor".

"Methinks" Ser Brynden Blackwood scoffed from behind Robb where he rode in silence next to his father. "Who talks like that?"

"Ah, she'll be right!" Smalljon boomed and slapped the knight over his armoured back in goodhearted comradery. "You'll see. Me, myself? Well, there is this once wench back at Stony Sept" he began to tell about someone he had met only two days earlier. "Thick, curly black hair, blue eyes, the most perfect hips you've every laid your bloody hands on! Her name's Bella" he did not even have to think about it or strain to remember, which was unlike Smalljon. "She wouldn't even take payment for any of the four times I bedded her after the first. From a whore that's a sign of praise if ever there was one! I think I'll lay her over my horse and take her with me when we pass through on our way back!" Robb rolled his eyes ahead of them where they could not see. Umber men were a crude and special lot, though good natured at heart. Except for every other ancestor, who ate people. "And what about you, Ser Loras Tyrell? What fair Southron maid has the heart of the Knight of Flowers?"

"I had someone" Loras Tyrell said at last, a dark mood hanging over his pretty little head. "And because of Stannis Baratheon they were taken from me". They quieted at that, the mood growing sombre quickly. Robb had a suspicion about that, of course, given a few things that Margaery had let slip during their long talks together. He truly did not care. A true deviant was a someone who lay with animals or with children, not someone who happened to love another man. One of the Caswell men back at Winterfell had been in an all but name married to another man, a merchant in Wintertown. The fact was, anyone could say the vows before the heart trees if they kept the Gods of the Forests. Anyone could say whatever vows they wished. You only needed the permission of your liege, your kin and your beloved before you did so, not like in the light of the Seven with all their rules. And though few of even the Old Ways shared his views-

His train of thought was resoundingly shattered as a trail of horses thundered past them at the juncture of roads up ahead, racing into view from the left and out of view to the right through the trees. In the passing he had seen only a glimpse of their banners, and he could not believe his eyes. Or his luck. They stopped and stared, and in the end it was Smalljon who spoke. "Was that Gregor bloody Clegane?"

"After him!" Robb drew his sword and spurred his horse forwards. This was their prey, and the Gods had sent him into the path of the King in the North. _And they say there's no such thing as luck_.

"The King in the North!" Tytos Blackwood shouted as he too drew steel, and he and his sons were the first who came after Robb on their way, followed by Loras and Robar and Smalljon at the back, leaving behind the main following that struggled to keep up with their faster horses.

Through the trees and the woods they charged after the Lannister formation. A hundred men were at his back, one of many such bands scouring the lands after he had gotten a message from Derry. After the battle at the Red Fork, a battle that should never have been fought if his uncle Edmure had known his damned place and followed orders, Gregor Clegane had been cut off from his main forces with only a small contingent of personal guards following him, and so had fled deeper into the woods. Robb had ordered the Karstark and Bolton men to begin the siege of Harrenhal after word had come out that Tywin Lannister had taken much of his remaining forces east to the Crownlands and then ridden out himself.

Gregor Clegane was a monster and a beast. More importantly, he was Tywin's beast, and a legendary fighter that was one of the principal pillars of Tywin's fearsome reputation. If he captured the Mountain Robb would deal a decisive blow towards Lannister morale. And with the invasion of the Westerlands approaching fast, that was something he sorely needed. If he took the Mountain he only needed some way to take the Golden Tooth or Crakehall or Casterly Rock and the war would be made nothing but a formality. He would have won. He would have held the Lannisters at a strangle-hold, and he would have won.

But capturing the Mountain that Rides proved more difficult than he had anticipated.

The Mountain and his men, riding under a yellow banner with three black dogs on it, veered off the road and into the woods proper, and Robb whirled his sword above his head and had his formation disperse to get all of them. Some of the Moutain's men were ridden down, some stood their ground and down the horses of their pursuers, and between the passing trees Robb could spot other fighters not his own. Ragtag men on horses following a scarred man, flying no banners at all. But he had no time for them or theirs. His men could deal with them if they were his foes. All he chased was Gregor Clegane.

One man with a mouth full of teeth filed to cruel points turned around in his saddle and spotted Robb, and the sight of him filled the young king with disgust and hate, especially at how bloody he was around the mouth with the gore of other people. He reached out to Grey Wind, with his mind and not his hands, a dreadful thing that afeared him in its nature just as much as he marvelled at how natural and easy it had become, and sicced him on that Biter. Grey Wind howled as he went after that man, leaping into the air to land on his back while his horse still galloped, and then it was just Robb and the Blackwoods and the Mountain racing through the woods.

Armstark veered and careened, dodging tree after tree, making Robb lag behind, and a short while later he was a ways away when he saw the Mountain's horse stumble over a rock and break its back in the fall under Clegane's titanous weight. Snarling and cursing Gregor drew his enormous sword, a greatsword that he could hold in only one hand thank to his size and freakish strength, and killed the horse by stomping on its head, turning at the last moment to see Tytos Blackwood charge at him, lance in one hand and sword in the other. Never had Robb seen such a brave sight, that elder knight bearing down on that monstrous brute, the sunlight through the leaves above shimmering in the steel of his armour.

Which was why it was so shocking to see Gregor Clegane cleave his horse in half and knock Tytos Blackwood from the saddle with a single swing of his greatsword. "Father!" Brynden Blackwood charged in after his brother Lucas as their father crashed to the ground with a sickening crunch of a snap, his neck breaking like a twig under his weight.

"Bollocks!" Robb hissed as he urged Armstark forwards and towards them, into the small hollow that they had landed in, but he was too late, too slow, and the Mountain was too fast. Lucas Blackwood hadn't worn his helmet, and his skull was cloven down to the collarbone before the Mountain's sword lodged in his armour. Brynden Blackwood charged with a mad roar and imbedded his sword in Clegane's armour – but he didn't punch through. The Mountain's armour was too thick, and Lucas died when the Mountain struck him over the head in rage, spinning helmet around with his head until his face was over his shoulder like an owl's.

Too late Robb unhorsed in a single fluid motion and slapped Armstark over the rump with the flat of his sword, sending his horse out into the woods and away from the Mountain to join Grey Wind. Clegane was panting and huffing within his great suit of impossibly heavy armour as he wrenched his sword free and stood there, and Robb had to admit that he made a fierce figure. "Gregor Clegane, a killer of babes and a false knight". He lifted his wolfshead shield high and laid the tip of his sword against its rim. "I'm going to bloody well enjoy this". He had known the Mountain by reputation only, but now the battle had become personal.

"No" the Mountain boomed back, his voice seeming to Robb like the frenzied barking of a mad dog. "I will!" And the earth shook and broke under Clegane's feet as he charged over the bodies of Blackwood's sons. Robb only just managed to dodge the swing of his mighty greatsword. _Gods be good, he is fast_.

Clegane thundered past him, and Robb stepped around, hacking at his back. Lionslayer bounced off harmlessly, Clegane's armour being too thick to penetrate. He slashed at the Mountain's legs, but even there he did little damage. He had to throw himself flat on the ground to dodge the next swing, as even a glancing hit from that massive sword would have hurt him greatly. He was lighter and faster. And cleverer. He had to use that to his advantage.

"Stay still!" the Mountain roared and Robb came to his feet and stood just in time to block another blow towards his shield, and though the strike was glancing it vibrated through his entire body. "Die!" Robb went around that strike and hefted his sword with both hands, thrusting it with all his strength through Clegane's thigh. Through the weaker leathers at the back of the Mountain's knee the steel tip went, and Robb gave a shout of triumph before a heavy strike knocked him back and the shield and sword out of his grip. Bells ringing in his head he scrambled to his feet to see his sword lying to one side of the hollow, his shield to another, and the Mountain, now limping over the profuse bleeding in his leg, in between.

Sword or shield? It wasn't even a choice for Robb. He dashed to one side, straining under the weight of his armour as he picked Lionslayer up from the leaf-covered ground, and turned the tip towards Clegane. Now he had just to wait and keep dodging while the Mountain bled to death-

Such plans were easily made and harder to follow through on. The Mountain roared as he came after him, and Robb, on arms trembling and near breaking with the effort, parried one blow, then another, than a third, but by the fourth his sword was knocked aside. Despite his size and his strength the Mountain was, after all, a master fencer, and Robb had allowed himself to forget that. And so Celgane retaliated with a back-edge strike.

For an instant Robb's world felt sluggish and slow, like the motions of all living things were passing through thick syrup, as he saw the blade of the Mountain coming towards him. He had time to say only two words before it struck him.

"Oh, bollocks".

The sword did not cleave through him or split his armour as it knocked him back, though he could feel two of his ribs all but snap as his breastplate went from convex to mildly concave. It was a testament to his padded leather jerkin, worn beneath his armour, that he was not killed in that stroke but thrown back nigh on fifteen feet and slammed his back into a tree. Grunting in pain and shaking his ringing head to clear it he looked up to see the Mountain advance on him, greatsword in one hand and primal, animalistic huffing coming from in under his helmet, a sound of a lust for murder. Robb scrambled to his feet, back pressed against the tree trunk with Lionslayer in hand, and somehow the only thought going through his head was that he had to end this monster. For Margaery.

She deserved to live in a where no maddened rapists and killers like that one lived. He had to end the Mountain. For Margaery's sake. And even as he thought himself foolish and stupid for thinking that he did not let go of the emotion.

There, at what he thought was the hour of his death, he saw her face before his eyes. He took a better grip on his sword and held it up before him. _Gods_ , it was getting hard to breathe.

"Oi, arseface!" The Gloverblade, made of bad steel roughly forged into a greatsword of monstrous size, hit the Mountain over the head of his helmet and made it ring out like a bell, and the Mountain staggered to the side and almost fell before he turned. As he turned around he faced three men, not one.

Ser Loras Tyrell, the First Sword of the Reach, stood to the left in his armour of flowers and silver steel, arming sword in one hand and a misericorde in the other, his hair flowing loose and long in the breeze. To the right was Ser Robar Royce, Knight of Runestone, in that burning burnished bronze, the runes gleaming about his body in the sunlight that filtered down from the canopies above as he lifted his longsword with two hands. And in the centre between them stood Jon Umber the Younger, the grey plates and black leather on top of his long chainmail shirt shimmering in the passing shadows, that ugly ancient greatsword with a handle of human bone held high in his hands.

"You're not taking another step towards my King, you ugly goatfucker" Smalljon warned with a growl, and beside him the two knights pointed their weapons at the Mountain. "Gods give me strength, you die today!"

"Smith, strengthen my back" Loras and Robar spoke in one voice the ancient prayer of Andal knights. "Warrior, true my sword. Father, bless me with courage. The Seven light my path".

"The King in the North!" Smalljon charged in first with a roar, and his blade met the Mountain's in a block that sent sparks of red hot steel grinding off his rough-forged sword. Another man would not be able to do so, and Smalljon was scarcely able to with both his arms against the Mountain's one, but the men of Umber were strongly built. The Mountain planted his feet and pushed him back just in time to block a hit from Loras, but he forgot about the reinforced dirk in the Knight of Flower's off-hand, the tip of which punched through his armour as Loras stabbed it down and bit deep into his arm.

The Mountain turned to hack at him in vicious murder, but Robar struck him over the back and sent him reeling. And so the fight in earnest began. Robb could only stand and marvel as he struggled for breath at the swordsmanship on display before him. Loras fought like a dancer, every technique as graceful as a swallow's flight through warm summer winds, bending before the Mountain's sword and stepping aside to eat away at his defences one pinprick at a time. Robar was a wind in itself, flowing back and forth, slamming into the Mountain only to flow or jump back every time the blade came after him, courtesy of his long training to fight in his heavy ancestral armour. And Umber…

Umber was a bear, fighting like a berserker of Last Hearth was meant to. He never let up, always moved forwards, his ancestral sword chipped at and sending sparks everywhere as he met the Mountain's blade head-on. Together, fighting as one for the first time, they forced the Mountain back, inch by hard fraught inch.

Black spots appeared for Robb's vision, and breaths that had come in a struggle came suddenly not at all. He struggled at his sides and at his shoulders, his fingers trembling and fumbling, until he found the right straps and could let his breastplate fall off. It didn't help much, though a little. He was struggling for breath still. Blast, had the damn monster somehow broken his lungs? He took a deep breath – and a lance of agony shot through him. _No_. He shook his head and stood up straight, gripping his sword with both hands. He was the King in the North.

And that was not the day he died.

Umber parried one of the Mountain's now frenzied and desperate blows – only for something terrible to happen. The poorly forged metal of his sword was finally cut through, and the blade broke in half as he reeled back. Staggering to the side as Robar and Loras fought Clegane Smalljon looked down on the shattered remnants of his ancestral sword, handle in one hand and more than half the blade in the other.

He blinked. That was his ancestor's sword, a sword trusted to him by his father as a sign that one day he would be heir of Last Hearth. He blinked. As a boy his father had showed it to him, telling him that one day it would be his. He blinked. He was an Umber man, and Umber chief, and this blade was his birthright. He blinked – and then he looked up at the Mountain and dropped the ruined sword to the forest floor.

With an inarticulate roar Smalljon charged Clegane with nothing but his gauntleted hands held before him, bloody murder of the highest order in his hands. He crashed into the Mountain, who faltered back and swung wildly with his sword – only to hit Robar Royce over the shoulder with it and see the blade shatter as if it were made of glass. As Loras stabbed the Mountain through the shoulder Umber forced him to his knees in a wrestling match titans, and so the Knight of Flowers and the Knight of Bronze stepped before the Mountain that Rode No More and took their swords in both their hands.

As Robar and Loras plunged their swords through the Mountain's breastplate and then pulled them out Clegane howled in pain before his head fell forwards, now only able to weakly struggle at Smalljon's restraining hands. "Now, your Grace!" he called out to Robb who approached slowly, every breath hurting in his breast. "End him!"

"No" Robb shook his head to their great surprise. He would not murder a beaten man, even a foul criminal like Gregor Clegane. The Riverlords would see to his justice. "This one goes in my dungeon". And then he used the pommel to smash the Mountain over the temple, sending him spiralling into unconsciousness – after another three blows, that is.

Afterwards, as the other riders and squires set up camp around that hollow and tied the Mountain to a tree with the thickest ropes and fetters that they had on hand, a couple of surgeons came to look on the conditions of the principal fighters. The mystery fighters that had come to aid them in wiping the Mountain's Men and Murderers clean off the face of the world, the Brotherhood without Banners, were gone with the wind and without a trace, though Robb had one messenger send out riders to meet with them and offer them his full reward and all amnesty if they joined the war on his side. Loras was mostly unhurt after his fight, though battered and dead tired as they peeled him out of his dented cuirass and looked him over, and Smalljon, though bruised, took to drinking and booming out boasts and jokes to the great amusement of the camp. Robb did not.

Robb was sitting on an old tree stump with his upper body bared under his surgeons' ministrations, staring at the three bodies laid out under a tarp weave at the edge of the hollow, bitterly cursing himself for being too late to save them. Tytos had been one of the first men to crown him, and his sons had been boys. Little boys, who had died when Winter came. Boys merely. And Robar…

Robar rose from the rock he had been sitting on and walking up towards the downed Clegane. Slowly, almost softly, he began to speak.

"I was always second" Robar's voice came as an echo from within his helmet before he took it off and let it fall to his feet, showing a face deathly pale and wan and streaked with a fever sweat. "Always. Second son, second best, second borne. I was not even allowed to be Runesmith – my uncle's bastard took that honour from me before I was even born. Second best. I would win nothing, inherit nothing. Second best. I went to Renly, but then he died and I had no other choice at honour than betraying the trust of the most tender woman I have ever met. Second best".

He drew in a deep breath and sneered at the downed and chained Mountain. "But look at you now. Gregor Clegane, the Mountain that Rides. And who beat you? Second best – hah! Who brought you down?! Know my name, cur!" With all his power he kicked the unconscious butcher across the cheek, splitting his left cheek into a hundred bleeding pieces of skin against his teeth. "I am Robar" another kick "fucking" and another "Royce!"

"Fucking aye so you are!" Smalljon took the panting Bronze Knight by the shoulders and pulled him away from the downed Mountain. "But let's not kill him just yet. The King wants him alive for the Riverlands' justice-" but Royce did not hear him. Within his bronze plate suit Ser Robar crashed to ground, unconscious. "Oh, bloody shite, not you too. If you die I'm taking your fancy armour" Smalljon muttered as he checked the man for wounds before looking up at Robb sitting on his tree stump. "Not dead. Just exhausted by the looks of it, your Grace".

"Good" Robb gave him a tired nod as a gathering of squires came to drag the second son of Runestone to his tent and peel him out of his armour. He sighed and put his head in his hands. Tytos Blackwood and his sons Brynden and Lucas were both dead. His Lady wife and his daughters would be devastated. And his third son Hoster, now Lord of Raventree hall, was in the North with Greatjon Umber. _Oh, Gods, what a cursed mess_. He hoped that it had been worth it, losing Tytos Blackwood.

Was the death of a friend and good man ever worth anything the world could offer in return?

Damn it all, he wished Margaery was with him. She would have taken his hand and told him that all would be well in the end, that he would just have to see it all through and stand strong through it. Or so he imagined that she would say. And so something occurred to him.

He didn't care.

He didn't care if she was trying to seduce him for the sake of her family or some Southron cause for the Iron Throne. He did not care if it was all for show, if it was all a mummer's farce. The warmth of her skin, the scent of her hair, the brown of her eyes, the sound of her voice: these things were not false, even if everything else was. And he didn't think it was. Not really. He knew that it was a scheme, but at the same time he refused to believe it. He had his instincts, instincts that had served him well in battle, instincts that told him that something dark was afoot. He didn't care to heed them.

The wind stroked his cheeks, bringing with it a scent of fading summer from the south, and he looked up to his left to see a spot of blue in the greying woods.

And slowly a smile came to his face.

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

She learnt that Robb and her brother had gone after the Mountain two days after they had left.

She knew of the Mountain. Gregor Clegane, Tywin Lannister's butcher. Rapist, murderer, reaver and abomination of nature most foul – that was what he was to the people of the Reach. He was also more than eight feet tall and stronger than a giant yet faster than a hawk in flight. She had seen him once, at a tourney. The mere sight of him had terrified her as a girl of twelve. And it was just as frightening now, many years later. The thought that her brother and her… that Robb would face such a beast – the beast that had on the orders of Tywin Lannister murdered and defiled Elia Martell and smashed open her children's' heads in against the walls of the Red Keep – scared her.

She did not enjoy being frightened. In fact, no one did. But she knew some ladies in Highgarden that acted like they did, clinging to the shoulders of knights and men and their elders at the slightest whiff of blood or the crawling of the smallest Spider. She had always thought it ridiculous, though as she grew older she had realised how advantageous such behaviour could sometimes be. She was not so easily frightened.

Still, she had found herself in the sept of Pinkmaiden on the third day, the only other person in there but for a lady in a black dress and a widow's veil, praying for Loras and Robb and their safe return once she had sent her ladies away to tend to their missions. As she prayed to the Mother her eyes could not help but open and glance over to that other praying lady in the small sept. Once that woman had been beautiful, and in some ways she still was, with auburn hair and fair blue eyes, yet the dark rings were deep around her eyes and her cheeks had gone sunken and wan with grief. After a quarter of an hour of earnest prayer – more than Margaery had every truly prayed in a single sitting before – Margaery could not help but to take conversation with the mourning woman. She was not one for ecclesiastical matters, anyway.

She had to almost pull the words out of her, but in the end she got her to speak. She had told her that she had come to Pinkmaiden from Riverrun with her son, and that she was grieving for those that she had lost, both living and dead. "I lost my husband, my father is dying, and my son has pushed me away. Or I pushed him away. I was too much like dear husband, I fear, too holding to my honour. Still I know not how to make us as we were once again. If we ever can be. Hard words were said. Words I cannot take back".

"Words are wind" Margaery had dismissed her stubborn dourness with a wave. "Just talk to him, won't you? Do not hang to hard to pride, and forgive. It might not be easy, but such is our lot in this world at times. We are forced to debase ourselves from time to time to get what we want. If we are not queens, that is". A queen needed not seduce and beg and bow to have her way. She needed to scheme still, to play what her Grandmother called the Great Game of Houses, but she was powerful on her own and not merely because of the men supporting her.

A queen could be truly free, unlike almost any other woman in the world. Truly strong and truly free. Margaery knew of many women now who became warriors and fighters. Brienne and the Mormont women came to mind. But they did so by adopting the trappings of men, men's traditions and men's behaviour. And was that truly strength? Was a woman only strong if she was a man? Not if she was a queen. Not if she was wealthy and had her own lands and was truly free to do as she pleased.

Margaery took to going to that sept every day and talking to that mourning widow in black. She was a widow too though, and she confessed to her that she did feel a little bad for nor mourning her husband. She did not say that it was Renly. Just like the Widow did not say what her name was or who her son was or who her husband had been. The older woman consoled her just the same, telling her that it was one thing to be sad and another to act like she was out of respect. Most did only the latter, and truly, if the dead could see and hear the goings on of the living world, was that not a form of a lie, an insult to the dead?

She made a fast confidant in her, perhaps because they truly did not know anything about each other unlike Margaery's friends and handmaidens. But something felt familiar about that woman, though, something she could not quite place. She had a feeling that she was blind and completely foolish for not seeing it. All she knew was that she was a widow with a dying father, had one son she thought "lost" to her, had daughters that had been "taken" from her, and had one son that had been "broken". Other than that they only spoke of the nature of grief and the ways of the world. Perhaps it was precisely because they knew nothing about each other that they could be so open with each other.

Her new friend brought some comfort to her in those days, but not all too much. She did what she could to pass the time. She kept at her archery, and though she was steadily growing more skilled, now hitting the boss from sixty feet in consistent spreads, her aim tended to waver and her hands shake at times when the ill thoughts intruded on her focus and she remembered the looming shadow of the Mountain. She hated it, feeling so helpless. Next time they rode off, she swore by the Seven that are One, she would be coming with them.

If there was time. From Loras and Robb's departure she had twenty-two days until Willas arrived at Pinkmaiden with her escort home, and by then her plans needed to have progressed to near-fruition. She had little other choice. She would have to change her strategy and become more direct.

She had to succeed. "Let's not lose our heads over this" Grandmother had asked. Befriending the Starks without getting anything for it would only serve to make an enemy of the Lannisters.

But on the sixth day they returned, and she breathed a deep sigh of relief when she embraced her brother once again. She had come to meet them at the courtyard so behold to state of their fellowship. Other than a few dead and quite a few wounded they seemed whole. Loras was bruised and battered and so was Smalljon, but the Umber man seemed no worse for the wear as he had one arm wrapped around the shapely young woman with black hair that rode before him in the saddle and clung to his chest. Worse was the sight of Ser Royce, who all but fell out of the saddle despite not wearing his armour, pale and shaking and sweating all over, his eyes goggled and red. And Robb-

She had seen how he was lifted out of the saddle of his white destrier, and before he had been able to give her more than a greeting and a smile he had been surrounded by surgeons and healers and harried away. Loras told her that he had been wounded and had wounded in turn when he had fought the Mountain before the three of them got to him. Robar Royce had taken him down while Loras hamstrung him and Smalljon held him in place. Now he, along with Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard, were locked away in Robb's dungeons under Riverrun.

Two of the most dangerous men in the realms, who fought for the same side, locked in the same cell. Margaery saw _no_ way that could possibly go wrong. And she had a gown made of clouds also, that she had worn to the Merking's gala – of course it was a foolish idea. It was idiotic to the extreme.

But she allayed her concerns as she walked the gardens of Pinkmaiden castle later that day, when her brother had gone to rest and eat with several of her ladies. She would not argue with Robb – she could do that if her plans succeeded – not yet, at least. She had to make sure that he was at least partly hers before Willas got to Pinkmaiden. She had only a fortnight left. And what was that queer scent that suddenly lay on the breeze? It was sudden, but it might perhaps be the sweetest thing she had ever smelled-

"Lady Margaery" Robb's voice spoke up, and she turned about in the garden, smiling as she saw him. Her smile fell somewhat when she saw that his shirt was loose about him, and beneath it was bandages and linen wraps. None of it was touched by blood, but that was still little comfort, and what was less comforting was that his shirt was only undone just enough the make sure that she did not get a peek at his muscles. "Loras told me that I could find you here" he said, winching as he walked down those stone steps into the garden, holding back his four attendants with a raised hand, his other hand behind his back as Brienne gave him an approving look. "'Tis good to see you, Margaery. I hope you haven't been too bored with-"

He said no more, for Margaery stepped up close to him and examined his bandages through his shirt, her eyes and fingers moving over the linen strips with practiced ease, lifting at places to see the colour of his skin. "I let you out of my sight for six days, and you almost get yourself killed" she sighed and furrowed her eyebrows together. "My brother was unharmed. Is this your way of indirectly saying that you are not as puissant a dueller as my brothers?"

"It's my way of saying that I was unlucky enough to distract the Mountain so that Loras, Robar and Smalljon could take him down" he answered a manner seemingly a little prickly, before he inclined his head. "Also aye. I was always a better fighter from the back of a horse. Better with a lance. My brother was better with the sword and bow. Gods, only Theon could outmatch him with the bow".

"You truly miss home, for all your glory, your Grace" she spoke softly and took him by the cheeks. "It is adorable, truly. Now, will you let me see to your wounds or not? Unlike your camp sawbone surgeons I was trained by Maesters of the Citadel". At his look she chuckled and smiled at him, and he smiled back. "My mother is a Hightower, remember? If it is one thing they have bounds and bounds of, it is Maesters. And gold. And ships – let's not forget about the ships. I know my grandfather doesn't, nor does he let anyone else" she talked as she gestured him towards one of the benches in the garden, a stone thing that had once been ornately carved with the likeness of dancing animals and birds in flight. "Always he goes on and on about them every time we visit the High Tower. 'Been to Asshai and back' he says. Larger ships than the Redwyne fleet, though nowhere near as many. And-"

"My Lady" Robb stopped before he sat down and turned to her earnestly, looking like he was about to say something of profound importance. "I-" he stopped, and his face fell. "I seem to have forgotten… I had it all thought out, and – oh, bollocks to it. Here" he said simply and took his other hand out from behind his back, and suddenly she knew what that fair scent had been. "For you".

Blue winter roses, an entire bouquet of them, black stems and grey-white thorns crowned with blue blossoms that smelled ever so sweet. She took them carefully and held them up, a ray of sunlight glancing off the edges of the winter petals and reflected back at her eyes like shimmering frost. "They are beautiful" she heard herself, even as a small part of her mind said _'Here'? Truly? I've been given flowers by suitors, men and boys, since I was old enough to stand, and all of them have been more eloquent than that_. "And smell so sweet" she breathed in of their scent as she lifted them to her nose. "Thank you, your Grace-"

"Robb" he told her, smiling back at her, suddenly looking ten years younger than he always seemed. "It's always 'your Grace' and 'my King' this way and that these days. I've told you already – please call me by the name my mother gave me".

"Only if you do the same for me… Robb" she could not hold back a triumphant smirk from gracing her lips as he turned his back to her and sat down. He unshouldered his tunic, and so she asked one of the attendants, standing to the side of the garden colonnade, to go fetch new linens and hot water and put her flowers in a vase in her chambers. Slowly she tended to his wounds, speaking quietly to him all the while she silently counted his scars – until Owen Norrey and Dacey Mormont stormed into the garden, a parchment letter in their hands. "Don't" she held her hands atop his hair when he made to rise. "You have got cracks and fractures in many of your major bones. Key bone, shoulder blade, second upper backbone – amongst others. No riding or fighting anywhere for at least a week, Robb. Please".

"Well then" he grumbled and gestured to Dacey, her face pale and serious, a trickle of blood going down the side of her lip where she in anger had bitten herself. Robb no doubt wondered what they had read in that letter, for so did she. And she also wondered why his personal guard kept reading his messages and barging in on him. But those questions faded away as she saw Robb read the message and a savage glow come to his eyes. He read it once, then once more, before he tightened it hard in his fist, so hard that his fingernails dug deep enough into his skin to draw blood. "My father raises him" he spoke quietly, and from out of sight Margaery could hear Grey Wind snarl. "My father clothes him. My father teaches him and brings him up as his own – and he lays siege to his castle and kills his men. Thank the Gods for the garrison I sent north with Umber. If not… Bran. _Rickon_ ".

"Your Grace" Margaery asked, knowing that it seemed like the time to start using titles rather than names, speaking carefully as the enraged Northerners stood waiting at their King's words. "What has happened? Is your family safe?"

"A man who I thought of as my brother is trying to kill my blood brothers" he all but snarled but obeyed her still, remaining seated even as his hands trembled with rage. "Besieging Winterfell. Argh! Send ravens to the Dreadfort" he looked up at Dacey Mormont "to Last Hearth, to Karhold, to all the high holds and the keeps. Tell them of the reavers. And tell them that I want Theon Greyjoy alive – so that I can look him in the eye before I cut his traitorous head off myself!"

* * *

 ** _Jon_**

Of all the things Jon had thought that he would be fighting in his life, Ironborn was not one of them.

But there he was just the same, on the ruined black basalt ramparts of Moat Cailin, running Longclaw through the breast of a man bearing a black tabard over his chainmail, smearing the white scythe there with red. The two other archers there, taken aback by the black-haired stark that had climbed their holdout overlooking the Battle of the Moat, scrambled back towards the edge, one dropping his bow to reach for the axe at his hip. "Fucking wolves!" he shouted in the customary eloquence of Ironborn men and lifted the buckler on his arm when Jon came after him, but Longclaw's blade was valyrian steel. It cut through shield, axe, arm and man in the same motion, and Jon wiped the blood from his face to see Ghost with the last archer's entire head in his mouth, shaking the small man to death like a dog would a rat.

Jon wasted no time thanking his Direwolf with anything more than a glance. He shoved Longclaw back into its scabbard, bloody still, and took up one of the archers' shortbows from the ground and a quiver full of arrows off their backs. Nocking an arrow to the string he turned westwards, looked down at the swirling mass of fighting men and took aim and drew back. He released, and a man in Greyjoy colours, black and a gold kraken, fell over with an arrow jutting through his eye. Jon drew another arrow and pulled back again. There were a lot of Ironborn, and much murder still to be done.

Jon had known that trouble was afoot from the morning he and the Umber band left Last Hearth, for a raven had arrived from one of the keeps along the Stony Shore, saying that longships had landed in the night. Ironborn had come to sack and conquer the North, and Greatjon had been furious.

"I will kill that rotten, kraken-smelling spindly little fuck myself!" he had roared and kicked a stable door so hard that it splintered as he went to fetch his freakishly large destrier. "Theon fucking Greyjoy! Oathbreaker! Traitor! I'll cut his head off and shove his cock down his throat! I'll cut his legs out from under him and feed it to the dogs while he watches! I'll-!"

It had gone on like that for almost the entire break-neck ride towards Winterfell. Eight very long and very shouty days. It was a wonder to Jon that he hadn't gone hoarse permanently.

They had found Winterfell under siege. Luckily the eighty men of Umber's original escort left behind there, sent by Robb to protect Bran and Rickon as he feared Lannister assassins entering the barely garrisoned keep otherwise, had managed to hold out against the three hundred Greyjoy warriors that assaulted the walls. Jon and Umber rallied the men of Wintertown and Houses Caswell and Overton, the few that had not marched south with Robb, and fallen on the Greyjoy camp in the night with a newly arrived contingent of riders from the Dreadfort to aid them. It was said, by one of the men that Jon had captured rather than killed on the spot, that Theon Greyjoy himself had lead them to Winterfell, but the Prince of Pyke himself was nowhere to be found. Umber had said that he had fled, though Jon had his suspicions of how soon the Bolton men returned to the Dreadfort in the dead of night, like the Red Riders of ancient history who brought men to be flayed by the Red Kings.

Anyway, it had not been a concern of his. If Theon Greyjoy was taken by the Boltons, all the better. He'd learn in the Leechlord's dungeons that one did not forsake one's sworn King, even for the sake of one's father.

Perhaps Jon would even ask Lord Roose for a strip of Theon's skin to piss on once they were done with him. _Traitor_. He had been raised in Winterfell, with Jon and Arya and Robb, and he had been their friend and their brother in all but blood. He had sworn himself to Robb. And now he partook in this invasion? Even the Dreadfort's dungeons were too good for him. _If_ the Boltons had taken him, that was. He might just have fled.

If such, Jon would take his head himself. And feed it to Ghost.

After breaking the siege Jon had seen Bran and Rickon, the new Princes of Winter. They had both grown so much, though when Jon heard about Bran's fall and the subsequent attempt by the Lannister Imp to slit his throat in the night he had raged. Rickon had grown moody and sullen. And Jon had seen Bran's look, hollow-eyed and void of sleep, how he looked longingly towards the outer northern walls and their towers and the bright winter skies beyond. Jon thought that he must had longed to climb again, but such would be an impossibility now. And after hearing the words of Maester Luwin, who had taken a Greyjoy arrow to the shoulder but was otherwise whole and sound, and reading the messages from Father and Lady Catelyn to Robb, Jon had put two and two together. It all made sense when he read the message from Stannis Baratheon, another would-be King. The Baratheons in King's Landing were all Lannisters, and bastards to boot.

Normally that last part would have given him a little sympathy for them, but not then. He had deduced that Bran must have seen or heard something when he was climbing the towers, something implicating the incest of the Queen and her brother. That was why he had fallen – no, been pushed – and that's why they had sent a dagger in the night to slay him. Why they had poisoned Jon Arryn.

All of this, for Lannister blood. They had started a war for Lannister blood. And for Lannister blood he'd end them all.

After the siege was over Umber wanted to ride hard for Deepwood Motte. "The only one that kills Glovers should be an Umber" he had said, for the Ironborn had laid siege to the Glover keep and perhaps even taken it. But Jon, after reading Stannis's letter, had none of it. Greyjoys and Ironborn be damned, he was going to go down South and give the Lannisters what for. He'd see if Tywin Lannister really shat gold. And so they had put the matter to a vote, with Hoster Blackwood winning the vote for Jon, and they had ridden south after telling Bran to keep the peace and keep Winterfell safe. The reinforced garrison could hold off anyone until Robb sent reinforcements from the South.

But he almost hadn't needed too. Most of the raiding parties and the reavers up and down the western coast were ineffectual. A few keeps had been captured, but little more. The only place of note that the Ironborn had taken had been Moat Cailin, and with the children of Howland Reed freed from a fate of being Greyjoy hostages after the Breaking of the Siege House Reed would send every man it could muster to help Jon and Greatjon retake it. Even Manderly men had taken up the cause when they rode past White Harbour. The Manderlys, after all, had a great hatred for reavers, being a family whose fortunes had long been plagued by raiders and pirates.

And one of the oldest keeps in the world, old Moat Cailin, an ancient castle of the First Men, had been taken by invaders from across the sea. The North would not stand for this.

The plan had been simple, hatched by Jon himself with a little help from the seasoned but unruly Greatjon. The Manderly troops, with their pikes and their banners and their horse, would march down the Kingsroad making a mighty ruckus along the way. They had been only a quarter of the size of the Ironborn garrison all in all, but their purpose was not to fight but to distract. As they drew the focus of the Greyjoy outriders to the North Jon and the Cannogmen under the command of one Moyen Blackmyre would crawl into the old Moat and attack them from the south.

Crushed between the lion-lizards of the marshes and the mermen of White Harbour the Greyjoy soldiers and the Houses sworn to Pyke would be forced to return to their ships or be cut down one and all. And thanks to Ghost making short work of the southern Ironborn sentries the plan had succeeded. Mostly. Jon could honestly not tell, with the Manderlys pressing through the ruined walls from the northern breaches, forcing the shield wall of Goodbrother men back step by step, and the Crannogmen falling on the unprotected skirmishers and light troops from behind. That did not stop him from lifting his bow and letting loose arrows, again and again and again. He had to do his part.

As they were attacked from afore and from the rear many of the Ironborn men of Houses with lesser loyalties to the Driftwood Crown decided that no, they would not die for Balon Greyjoy's madness. Jon watched from the corner of his eye the shields of Blacktyde, Volmark, Stonetree, Orkwood and Myre pour out of the gaps in the western walls and run for their ships that crowded the narrow marshaland streems by the far western slopes, disorganised and routed. Still the Harlaw and Goodbrother men remained, most of them anyway, and held their ground beside the Greyjoy men. They fought like all the storms of their Drowned God's primordial enemy were on the horizon. Like this the battle would last for hours. Something had to be done.

Jon looked down beside him to find Ghost standing there, panting, blood thick and matting in his snowy coat. Jon reached up to find his stolen quiver empty, and so he cursed and threw the bow aside and drew Longclaw again, and then he reached out to touch Ghost upon the mane, guided by some unknown instinct. In the heat of battle, with the blood pounding his ears, it was as if he could hear what the Direwold was thinking-

His hand fell upon Ghost's alabaster fur, and his vision spun around, as if the world had fallen away from under him. He grunted in confusion and somehow it came out in a canine whine, and he looked down to see white paws upon the basalt stone, and looked up to see himself standing there, still as a statue, eyes rolled so far back into his head that only the whites could be seen. He looked away from himself, the sight disturbing him, to the enemy ranks, and against them he shouted as if he was about to charge. From his muzzle as he lifted his fangs towards the sky came a howl-

Jon's world returned with a crash, and he yanked his hand away from Ghost as if touching the Direwolf had burned him. Still Ghost, always so silent and looming like a White Shadow, threw back his massive head and howled towards the heavens, louder than any ordinary wolf ever could. The sound was chilling, down to the bone, curdling the blood and hurting the ears, and by the howl the Ironborn turned and faltered, seeing the Lord Stark standing there, monster of legend by his side, his Valyrian steel sword held pointed at the clouds as he loomed on the basalt rock of the ruined walls.

Fear streaked through them, and they faltered, and within minutes their formations were smashed as the Northerners and the Crannogmen cut them down. Jon climbed down from his marksman's perch and landed on his feet in the dust just as one of the Manderly commanders marched up to him in his Southron plate armour, no doubt about to ask how he had gotten the Crannogmen to come with such a force. He got his answer before he could even ask as he watched in horror when the marsher men slit open the stomachs of their fallen enemies and pulled their entrails and organs out, making bloody laurels to hang from the branches of their heart trees. Jon had promised them a return to old ways, to olden times when they needed not shy from their old traditions.

Robb would perhaps object, but Robb had always been more concerned about what people thought about him than Jon ever was. Jon had never had any honour or reputation to uphold at all. No name to besmirch. He saw no reason why that should change after his name had. It was his name he was tainting, not Robb's. And he had broken every oath he had ever sworn. He had abandoned his watch, yet still he knew of the true enemy. Jon would do whatever needed to be done to secure the North and bring justice for his family.

Damn his soul and damn his name, House Stark would have its vengeance. For winter was coming, and the cold shapes within the falling snow knew no mercy.

Fighting still moved in one part of the boggy courtyard. Only one Ironborn fighter remained standing there now, a tall brute of a man in full plate – in defiance of Ironborn tradition – with a broken helmet in the likeness of a mutilated kraken on his head and a cruel and wickedly curved axe in his hands. Around him lay the dead in droves, and from his shoulder one of his arms hung loose and covered with blood, almost taken clean off by a lucky hit from a Manderly man's sword. Bleeding from a thousand wounds the man looked up as Jon approached, and he gave the Direwolf at his side a savage glare. That was before Jon's view was obfuscated by a lumbering and looming shadow of a shape.

"What is dead may never die!" the Greyjoy warrior roared and charged at that mountain of a man, but Greatjon Umber stepped forth instead of falling back and, inside the swing of that great black axe, he struck the warrior down with a mailed fist, knocking off his broken helmet.

"Really?" he questioned the plate-clad warrior, tearing the axe from his hand as the Northerners around him boomed in laughter. He then lifted his new axe and cut the head off that Ironborn giant. "Because you bloody well look dead to me now!" He took the head in his hand and lifted it up by a tired, trembling arm. "I'd recognise that traitorous mug anywhere! This is a Greyjoy – Victarion fucking Greyjoy! The Iron Kraken himself!" Greatjon's grin faded. "Thought he'd be tougher".

"Fortify the walls and send your riders to harry the Ironborn back to where they came from!" Jon looked to the Manderly and Crannogmen commanders, who bowed and did as he bid with the words "Lord Stark". It was one of the best sounds Jon had ever heard, but he could exalt in it later. Right then he walked up to Greatjon and took the head out of his hands.

"Victarion Greyjoy" Greajon repeated as he panted from out of his helmet, his armour and helmet dented and cracked and stuck with arrows but whole and still protecting him. "As I live and breathe, it is him".

"Have this sent to Pyke". Jon looked into those dead eyes with no emotion at all in his heart. "We'll add a message. I'll tell them that I will not rest. Not until I have put every man and woman alive with the name Greyjoy to the sword for their treachery. When the Lannisters are dead" Jon looked up to the south and the rest of Westeros in the distance "I will come for them next".

And as the Kraken banner was thrown from the top of Moat Cailin's towers and trampled underfoot he had them raise the Direwolf in its stead. White on Grey. His colours now. He was Snow no longer.

His name was Jon _Stark_.

And none of his enemies would sleep easy after hearing it. That he swore on the mother he had never known.

 _Jon Stark_.

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** You know, "ecclesiastical" is one of the oldest words in the English language – and it never occurs in A song of Ice and Fire. Always wondered about that, since, you know, middle ages and all.

By the way, I'm drawing on a little bit of medieval medicine in this chapter. There will be more of that to come. So all the major bones and organs that had latin names in English – like the vertebrae and the clavicals – will have more anglo-saxon names. Good? Good.

I suppose that medicine in Westeros would be routed in the Valyrian tradition since those guys were basically Romans, just like actual medicine is in Latin today, but I cannot be asked to make up words for "fractured sternum" in Valyrian. There's dedication to the craft on one hand, and then there's complete lunacy.

Also, sorry for Robb's musings on sexuality and Margaery's feminist musings. While I don't find the later too out of character – rather I see it as a way to flesh out and explain character while tackling the inherent contradictions of third-wave feminism that influences much of Mr Martin's body of work, especially ASoIaF – the former is, and not very adhering to the traditions and the times of the world. I will try to explain why I included it.

Well, followers of the Old Gods have next to no rules for behaviour in ASoIaF. And vows are said with witnesses before heart trees in wedding ceremonies, but never is it specified just what those vows are. Can two men say them? Can two women? Canon remains vague. My headcanon says it is possible, but rare.

But mostly it's because I, due to my own views and sexual orientation, would have a hard time writing the next hundred-or-so chapters with a title character who was homophobic. If you disagree with my views but otherwise like my story, feel free to ignore it. It won't come up too often.

Beyond that, I hope you have enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	7. I will Not Do It

**A/N:** This chapter should have been up the 15th, but I've been completely out on it and lying on my side all the time with weird crap being dribbled into my ear. Inner-ear infections suck.

Sorry for the delay. Enjoy ;-)

* * *

Chapter Seven – I will Not Do It

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

She would not do it. _I will not do it_ , she repeated to herself as she stood beside her brother Loras in the great hall of Pinkmaiden, smiling at her other, eldest brother as he limped down the hall towards her.

"Willas!" she greeted him and hiked up her skirts a little as she hurried down the steps up to the dais where otherwise the high table of the castle would be, reserved for banquets and feasts and judicial counsel. She crossed the floor of the great hall, laden with heavy blue and pinkish mats, and embraced her brother in his sterling Highgarden finery – a sleeveless green coat with golden threading, embroidery and buttonage along the front, over a long and flowing white shirt with billowing sleeves tight at the wrist and simple loose britches. Common Highgarden fashion, tweaked to accommodate his disability, that she had seen a thousand times before, but after having spent more than a month away from home she could safely say that even such a little thing was a welcome sight. She kissed him on either bearded cheek, and she could not help but notice that while his beard was long her… that Robb Stark's beard was fuller. Northern heritage that, no doubt.

 _I will not say it_. She linked her arm in her brother's – on his good side, of course – and walked slowly with him as he limped along good-naturedly by his gilded sandbeggar cane that held up his twisted and horribly mangled, both of them looking up at the end of the hall as Robb Stark rose from his seat. "Margy" he greeted her fondly, and she smiled at the childish sobriquet. "How are you? Your arm feels firmer than usual – have you been gaining muscles? Is exile from Highgarden agreeing with you?"

"I am quite well, brother dear" she assured him as they made their way down the hall. "I have taken up archery. I would not say that I am any sort of talent at it, but it is simply delightful. Such focus, such grace and force all made together…" she noticed that he was only half listening, staring at their host up ahead. _I will not say it_.

"Is that him?" he wondered, his smile never faltering but still changing in tone. She knew Willas. She knew his moods. "He looks… wounded". That he did, she had to admit. Though his eyes were blue again, fully winter blue and not opals shot through with sanguine red, he was pale all over, his chest bound still with linens beneath his billowing white shirt, and he was walking slowly to stand beside her brother, Robar Royce and Smalljon at the foot of the dais. "Your Grace!" Willas lifted his voice and called out. "Willas Tyrell, heir to Highgarden" he stopped before Robb Stark and urged Margaery away from him so that he could bow, graceful in his motions despite his crippled leg. "Son of Mace Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden and Lord Marshal of the Reach, Defender of Marches and Warden of the South".

"Robb Stark" the Young Wolf answered before Smalljon had time to boom out the customary proclamation "the King in the North". Smalljon pouted, while Loras and Robar seemed thankful. They had sensitive ears that day, for both of them were pit-eyed and hungover. Which was Smalljon's fault, for ever since they had downed the Mountain a fortnight earlier they had been drinking all throughout the nights at the Umber heir's insistence. Smalljon said it was merely jovial celebration, for a good fight well fought, but Margaery had been there when he had held the Gloverblade, his ugly greatsword, broken before Robb.

"It's not _that_ bad" Robb had offered, the scowl near-permanent on his face ever since the raven had come from Winterfell and Maester Luwin. "You can just reforge it. Just break it apart into smaller pieces, stack them into a billet and let the smiths have a go at it. No cause for worry".

"My da will murder me" the Smalljon had answered, an almost childish terror in his voice. "He will murder me. Truly. I'm not even jesting. He'll hang me by the ears from the heart tree in Last Hearth for a month to let the crows peck at my liver. And then he'll hand me off to the bloody Boltons!" He had looked up to his king with wide and frightened eyes. "And then he'll let my uncles have a try! And then my mother! My mother! She used to make necklaces out of people's ears – did you know that?!"

"Aye. Lord Karstark told me" Robb had answered levelly, and Smalljon had made a frustrated whimper before he marched off to find Loras, Robar and Bella and get handily and thoroughly drunk. Robb had shaken his head at his friend and bodyguard and herald – Margaery thought he should really find some sort of official title for the Umber man, but that would have to wait until after… _No_. _I will not say it_ – and then turned to her. "He's only a little older than me. It's easy to forget that at times… with him being seven feet tall and all".

Margaery had wondered what the Smalljon's father must look like to be called the Greatjon. Was he an actual giant, like the ones Robb had told her about, reciting the stories of his childhood as he was walked the ramparts with her in an attempt to take his mind off the state of Winterfell. But she knew it haunted him. Followed him through all his waking hours. And even after he had received a raven from Last Hearth with a message that made him give a grim nod and then, a week or so later, a raven from Winterfell that made him sigh with relief, he was still as tense as a metal bowstring.

She had been there to support him then – and she wasn't even sure that she was doing it to advance her plans. It was merely a gesture of honest concern on her part. True, honest concern.

That was when she began to suspect. _I will not say it_ , she repeated to herself for what felt like the thousandth time.

It was not fair. It wasn't how it was supposed to happen. She was supposed to be the manipulative one, the one pulling all the strings of his heart, the one that was in control. She was the granddaughter and greatest student of the Queen of Thorns, the one who ruled all the courts of the Reach with nothing but whispers and knowledge. Yet somehow, for some infuriating reason…

She had realised it two nights earlier. She had lain awake in the middle of the night, winter blue eyes passing before her sight every time she closed hers, and she had felt giddy and energetic. The same hollow and hurried energy that had driven her to wander the castle when Robb had been away to Riverrun managing his army. Though it was a little different this time. She snuck out from her bed, leaving Elinor softly snoring on the far side of it in hear heavy shift, and stood tall in the moonlight filtering in through the thick glass window. In that lunar penumbra all things took an azure cast to them. All things but the flowers in a vase by the window.

She had walked up to the roses, her sleeping gown falling softly around her feet over the mat covered stone floor. In the moonlight in the starry night – clear weather, for once, though the cold still reigned – they had seemed to shimmer in silver, white and grey. Softly she picked one up and smelled it, putting her nose to its centre bud hidden among the petals.

She did not know what was so special about them. Blue winter roses were just roses by any other name, and smelled just as sweet if more than a little stronger and more fragrant, and their blue colour was an afterthought. But as she breathed deeply of their scent she had uttered a happy sigh despite herself, and lowered the roses to find a smile she could not banish fixed on her lips.

It was then that she had known. She had promptly put the rose back down into its vase, climbed back into bed and put her face into her pillow. Then she had screamed in frustration. Repeatedly.

By the Seven that are One, she could not believe that she had been so foolish. The next day she had made to write to Grandmother, asking for advice, but tore up and crumpled the parchments every single time. That attitude was doing nothing but costing her ink. And so she stopped trying to do that and took another stance: _I will not say it_. Not to herself, not to anyone. She would not write it, she would not think it, she would not dream it. And then it would go away.

 _I will not say it. Not in a hundred years. Not even if the Father himself charges me to tell the truth._

"We've prepared a feast in your honour" Robb's words shook her out of her deep thoughts as he spoke up to her brother. "To celebrate your Lady Sister's safe return to Highgarden, and to commemorate our victory over the Mountain that Rides. And mourn our fallen". Her brother did not even shift in his expression, meaning that he had heard about it all already. And why would he not? It had been a fortnight since the news came to the army at Pinkmaiden, and news travelled quickly in the Seven Kingdoms.

Or Five Kingdoms. Five Kingdoms, and the North, if Robb had his way. She was not quite sure what to think about that. She knew what Robb felt about the Targaryen kings. The last one had burned his grandfather alive and had his uncle strangled to death. The Last Dragon, Rhaegar Targaryen, had absconded with and abducted his aunt, and raped her over and over again if the words of the Bolton men were to be believed. Or that was what they said, according to Megga. But then again, Megga was half Meadows on her mother's side, half traitor, and if Margaery had learned anything from the story of Theon Greyjoy was that treachery was something that almost seemed to run in the blood.

Robb had spoken with his Manderly captains, having summoned most of the Northern host to Pinkmaiden, negotiated hard for almost a week, and then issued an edict: any man who brought Theon Greyjoy alive before him would be awarded a Lordship. Or, rather, be made the heir to Ser Bartimus of White Harbour and next in line for the newly reinstituted Lordship of Wolf's Den, an old and meaningless crumbling keep on the headwaters of the White Knife that served as a prison to House Manderly. Robb had sworn to grant it to that man or woman himself – after he had cut the head off of Theon Greyjoy.

He would avenge himself on that traitor. He had sworn that with a fire in his eyes that almost made Margaery balk. Almost. At this point there would be very little that could make her balk. _I will not say it_.

Her brother and Robb seemed to get along splendidly, which was a saving grace. Under the watchful eyes of Smalljon Umber and Owen Norrey, the former now slinging around a frankly ridiculously large warhammer in place of his broken greatsword, the two of them along with Margaery and Loras walked the grounds of Pinkmaiden as the servants set the great hall in order for the coming night's… feast. Not a soiree or a party or a gala or a ball, but a proper Northern feast. It would no doubt be a learning experience. "All the banners but for Vance, Tully and Bracken have come" Robb informed, walking slowly and breathing carefully against his bandages as he healed. "It stands to be the largest gathering at Pinkmaiden since I retook this place from the Lannisters".

"Ah, yes – I heard about that" Willas noted as he limped on by the King in the North's side, and she could tell that the Northerners were suspicious of how a man that was crippled and so cursed by the Gods could smile so easily. "That is the nature of war, I suppose. Places like this… they change hands. Resources of worth passed back and forth, with little consideration for those within their walls". He caught Robb's look and smiled. "I am not insulting you, your Grace. Or implicating anything. But in war innocents are always caught between armies, and flowers trampled underfoot. You've done the same with the Lannister colours".

"My quarrel is with the Lannisters, not with the smallfolk". There was no doubt or hesitation or regret in Robb's voice. "I've had my men pay for what they have taken from them. No Riverlander family should suffer unjustly in this war".

"And what about the Westerlands?" Willas wondered, to which Robb stared hard. "Oh, no, I am not privy to any special knowledge or wisdom. All I have is my mind and my brother's and Randyl Tarly's wealth of knowledge in matters of war. That is the next place to which you will go, isn't it?" Margaery rolled her eyes. She had informed Highgarden of that already. Why was it that men thought that they were the only ones who knew anything about tactics?

Their conversation faded away as from the godswood and the sept a couple of figures came walking – one a young, short and sandy-haired man in a long grey burlap robe and a chain around his neck, each link a different metal. The other… Margaery recognized that woman. It was the Widow in the Sept, the one she had taken to speaking to while Robb was away riding down the Mountain. Her veils were lifted and her hood down, though her dress was still as black as ever, and Margaery couldn't help but feel that she was very familiar for some reason. Something about her-

"Ah, this is my friend and personal Maester, Ebbert" Willas introduced the man, who bowed with his hands inside his sleeves and said, with a thick Northern accent "the King in the North". He turned then to the woman, who gave him a perfunctory smile that did not touch her eyes in the slightest, and seemed to adopt a pensive look. "Forgive me, my Lady, but I do not know-"

"Catelyn Stark, born of House Tully" Robb cut him short in his half-posed question, and Margaery felt her cheeks go red with a heavy blush. _Oh, seven hells_. "My mother". Of course she was! They had the same eyes and almost the same hair and everything. Ugh, she must have been completely blind not to notice that. Gods, she had told that woman almost everything-

"Robb" Catelyn greeted her son, and though they seemed kind enough to each other as she took him by the hand and asked him how he fared Margaery could tell there was a tenseness between them. Yet the Widow in the Sept had mentioned that she and her son had began to speak to each other again, after news came from her home about his brothers – and oh, by the Seven, how had she not seen it sooner? "Lady Margaery" Catelyn then turned and smiled to her, taking her hand.

"Lady Catelyn" Margaery answered back, gathering her wits back about herself as much as she possibly could. "It is good to see you outside of the sept. I was so glad to hear that you and Robb have made friends again". It was always good to see Robb, though. _I will not say it. I will not_.

"You-" Robb, seemingly startled, cleared his throat pointedly and glanced from her to his mother to back to her. "You know each other". Margaery answered him only with a smile. She supposed that they did – though why did that seem to aggravate him so?

"Gentlemen, your Grace" Catelyn linked her arm in Margaery's, and Margaery struggled to maintain her smile. "If the Lady Tyrell and I could have a word in private?" Margaery had half a mind to yank herself out of Catelyn's grip and run for the hills as fast as she possibly could in her gown. There was something cold in that woman, though she truly loved her children. Margaery was fearing that Catelyn would slit her throat and burry her under some bushes – or something. She did not rightly know.

But their talk was oddly pleasant. At first the Lady Catelyn commented on the weather, saying that it was unusually warm for the beginnings of a Riverlands winter, and Margaery had said that she had not known. They did not have harsh winters like that in the Reach.

"Then you should come to see the Northern winters" Catelyn patted her hand in a gesture of support, and Margaery wondered where she was going with this. "Sometimes the snow falls several feet thick, and that is on warm winters. But there are few things as beautiful as seeing the land covered in white. And all the sounds of the world quieted, stolen by the snow. Only the white, soft and all‑encompassing, until the wind chases it up and makes it swirl around in torrents and waves all about. On those times all the Northerners will stop and look. They call it the Gods dancing".

"That sounds fabulous" Margaery replied honestly. It truly did, in every sense of the word. All the snow she had seen had been a slush-like muddy mass by the roadside ditches, spotted with white in places. It was nothing like what Lady Catelyn described. "I'd love to see it, some time. Where are the best views? Do you think you and your family could open your house doors to me, Lady Catelyn?"

"My son has already opened more than just his doors to you, Lady Margaery" Catelyn curved her lips upwards, but it was a smile as much as anything else she had ever given her. _She knows. Seven hells_. "The eastern shores of Long Lake are always fair, summer or winter. And the deep Wolfswood… sometimes you feel as if the land has never been touch by the hands of men. And the barrows in the Barrowlands, the barrows of the First Men, older than the hills and all the forests. To climb them is to walk on history, and feel the grass of time beneath your toes".

"It seems truly beautiful" Margaery scrambled for something to say, knowing that the long-term viability of her plans rested on a good relationship with Robb's family. For an instant she regretted not going to Joffery's court instead. King's Landing and the Lannisters were much more like Highgarden, much more like she was used to. They were of the South. But staying in the South would have meant that she would never have gotten to meet Robb. _I will not say it_. "The Reach is beautiful too. But I suppose we all find our homelands fair, Lady Catelyn".

"I know of the Reach" Catelyn said to her as they passed before a long row of lilies. "Minstrels fill your heads with songs of chivalry and courtly love. Fluff only, to make boys fight and girls swoon. Where all women grow up singers and spymasters, and all boys do naught but bang steel together until their minds are as fertile to reason as the sun-blasted wastelands of Deeper Dorne". Margaery made to stop and protest, but Catelyn held her still by her side as they walked. "I am not out to insult you, Lady Margaery. But the North is a very different place altogether. By far it's the largest of the Seven Kingdoms. It can fit the other six inside of it. My Ned used to say that the sun would never set on the North. Tell me, my Lady – what do you know of the North? Not the stuff of books and tales: what do you truly know of it?"

"I know" she thought about all the things that Robb had told her – little slivers of details about Winterfell and his family, about the beasts of the North and the hunts in the Wolfswood, about the northern massed ranks of pikes and swords that held the lines of their armies while the berserkers and the heavy cavalry that shattered the hearts and the flanks of their enemies, about… "I know it's cold. And damp. And that people up there live almost as they will. Almost without lords and rules and laws". She had come to know as much from the people she had come to know in the last two months. Everything else she was unsure of.

"Ned used to say that without the rain a man doesn't appreciate the roof over his head" Catelyn smiled, smiled truly and honestly, for the first time Margaery had ever seen it, but there was more sadness than there was happiness in her eyes. "And that without the cold he cannot know the fire in his heart. Home. To them… I was always an outsider there, but to them 'home' means something more than it does to us. They belong to the land. When they die their blood sinks down into the earth to feed their gods and join them, in the wind and in the waters and the trees. Family means everything to people of the Riverlands, valour and honour everything to the Reach – but my son" she drew in a shuddering breath. "My son, like all the best of them, of the North, will always do his duty first. His duty to the North, to the blood that has watered that cold earth. Ned always told me that. A few nights ago I cried hard when I realised what he meant. Even after he was taken from me, he still teaches me things…"

"I would have liked to meet Ned Stark" Margaery supplied carefully, recognising in Catelyn's words a woman devastated by grief and clinging to the few things she knew: family, duty, honour. The Tully House Words. "Robb speaks of him. Not often – I think it makes him sad, and angry – but he does. I wished that I could have known him". _Would he have liked me? For his son? Would he have approved of me and Robb, together? I will not say it, but… there's no harm in thinking, is there?_

"He was stern and distant to strangers. Sometimes I felt like even I didn't know him. But he was warm to his family" they came around a bend in the path and laid eyes on Willas and Robb again. "And he helped me raise one of the best boys who have ever walked this earth. He is my son, Lady Margaery. My firstborn. No matter our differences, I will always love him. So be true to him" Catelyn urged, and Margaery, by her side, could not help but nod. "And do not break his heart" the older woman added, her voice once again growing cold. "I know he seems strong, but he is still young, a boy in so many ways. But do not get yourself hurt, either. Flowers are fair, Lady Margaery" she separated from her and gave her a chilling smile "but they die in the cold, same as most things. Grow strong, Lady Rose. Winter is Coming".

Lady Catelyn moved away, and Margaery stood there a little while, staring at that stone-hearted woman's back. Perhaps she was gentle and kind towards her children and her own, but against her enemies… "Not all of us are flowers" Margaery whispered at her back, unheard by all but herself. "Some of us are she-wolves. Some of us are queens". She shook that from her mind and drew a smile back onto her face before she went to re-join her brothers and Robb by the edges of the gardens. Smoothly she sidled up to Loras, but when she heard the topic of their conversation she faltered.

"Who's this man that's so keen on having the Mountain's head for himself?" Robb asked, frowning all the while as he affixed Willas with a winter stare. "After what he's done, all throughout the years, a lot of men are keen on killing him".

"This man has more cause than most" Willas replied, and Robb cocked his head to the side as he crossed his arms before him and leant back against the pillar. "I know him well, and even I can say that he has the most cause of all. He is my best and closest friend in this world" Willas told him then, and Margaery scowled and glowered when she knew who her brother was talking about.

It was the Red Viper. The man that had made Willas Tyrell a cripple.

 _Oberyn Martell_.

* * *

 ** _The Red Viper_**

"Seems your little plan is failing, Doran".

Oberyn wasn't smug about it. Or, well, he was trying very hard not to be smug about it. Oh, fine, so he was _very_ smug about it. But it wasn't a happy smugness this time, like when he saw his plotting older brother fail in his plans at other times. It was a bitter, assured smugness, something that he had no name for. _Maybe Ellaria does. She has always had a way with her words – and with her tongue_. But other than that he had only one other thing to say to his brother.

"I told you so. I told you it would" Oberyn tutted as he shook his head, reaching for a silver tray of stuffed olives neck to the couch where he had made his seat, sitting in his brother's solar overlooking the water gardens in the peace of Dorne just three leagues, or ten and a half Northern miles, outside of Sunspear. He had slung his booted feet up onto the table in front of him, laid his body back, and relaxed in his brother's presence, wondering why he had been summoned. He had poems to write and sparring to do. "I told you. 'There are too many little parts in this plan, Doran' I said, and I am quoting myself perfectly. 'Little parts tend to get crushed under the wheel of circumstance'".

"Is that something the Maesters taught you, or that you learned in Essos?" Doran asked from his wheeled chair overlooking the water gardens and his children, who along with Oberyn's youngest Snakes and all the other children fostered there, moved about there, in between the pools and the fountains, happy and smiling and alive. _Unlike Rhaenys and little Aegon. Unlike Elia_.

"Circumstance, brother" he replied as he took an olive into his palm and flicked it into his mouth by the edge of his thumb, idly tasting for poisons on it before he chewed. It was a habit he had developed in his youth and still maintained, even though he knew that some poisons were scentless and killed if they as much as touched the skin. "My own sellsword company did not do so well. There were too many moving little parts. Just like this plan of yours. Have you finally realised the wisdom of that?"

"Perhaps – but as things are they need not change just yet" Doran offered and laboriously wheeled his chair around all on his own, having dismissed Areo Hotah and his other useless little guards from his presence as the two of them talked in private. Well, against Oberyn they would have been useless if he ever conceived of the notion to end his brother. Then again, they were not wholly useless against others. He was, after all, the deadliest man in Westeros. "Viserys Targaryen's death need not mean the end of it. I have contingencies".

"That boy in the second sons – Griff's ward?" Oberyn scoffed. "Please. I have seen – and had – whores in Lys with more Valyrian in them than that child. Perhaps if they wash the colour from his hair, but we would do better with almost any other puppet. And the Spider has already woven his net around the boy. He is beyond the reach of our touch". And he was not Aegon, no matter what they said. He would have known. He had seen the boy as a child, once, on a visit to Essos. He would have known Elia's son, his nephew, by sight.

"Which is why I will send Quentyn across the narrow sea to find the dragon's sister – now that she is no longer married to that Dothraki savage". _How fortunate_. This was his brother, as always. Plans within plans, schemes within schemes. Some failed, and then Oberyn had the rare luxury of being smug at his brother's cost. Most of his plans did not. "We made a pact. You signed it on my behalf. The Targaryen dragon returns – and the Lannister lion dies".

"Too many moving little parts, turning and spinning and making this impossible plan lurch forwards". Oberyn had never cared much for the plan to begin with, anyway. Too many meetings, too many hours wasted and actions planned only to be discarded.

He'd rather go whoring with Ellaria. _Perhaps in Lys_. Yes, Lys was always beautiful just at the cusp of winter. Winter never came properly there, just like with Dorne, but the cool winds from the North brought rains and new life to the flowers in the pleasure gardens. A hundred thousand colours in bloom, some without name in any human language. Between all the languages of mankind there were not enough words to describe them with. The girls would love Lys. And it was a long time since he had had a man, or woman for that matter, with silver-gold hair. Valyrians were always fiery, no matter their station or birth, if encouraged properly, with sweet kisses or hard touches or soft silk or with the sound of gold clinking against gold. Everyone had their price in Essos. It was a simpler place, that way. Not like Westeros.

"Your plan is slow. Too slow". _Too safe_. The gout had more than crippled his brother. It, and Elia's death, had stolen his spirit and his drive to action. Now he was slow and methodical instead of merely patient.

He wondered at times about what would happen to Doran if his plan ever succeeded? Would there be anything left of him, then? Would he be only a statue shell of a man, smiling sadly as he looked out over the Water Gardens from his prison-like chair? His plans and the children, most of them not his own, were all that he was now. And when the children grew up and his plans ended, what would be left of his brother?

"And it is safe – weighed against the other options, at least". Oh, Oberyn did not doubt that it was safe. He knew it was. And he hated it. A man was nothing if there was no danger in his life. "I have only so much family, brother. I will not see Martell blood spilled in vain just so we can have our vengeance. Now, no more of this" he held up his hand, putting an end to the matter, and Oberyn shrugged.

Doran, undeterred, went on. "You have received messages from Highgarden. I have read them". Without asking leave to do it first, of course. But he didn't fault him for that. Doran had always been a curious sort of person. "And my spies in Highgarden and the Riverlands have told me things. Now, with the Mountain in the hands of the Stark pup, you no doubt have a plan of your own. Speak it". The messages sent to him from Goldengrove, when Willas had gotten news of the Mountain's capture, had brought a new plan to his head, and though it wasn't an intricate one it was one he would enjoy carrying out.

"I travel to Riverrun, break him out" Oberyn answered with a cocky smirk. "Then I take a quick ship to King's Landing and ransom him to whomsoever rules the city when I get there. I offer him back to them if they agree to put him on trial for the murders and rapes that he has committed. He is a martial brute. He will demand trial by combat. I stand as champion against him. And I kill him. I make him confess what he did, and make him say, before the eyes of Gods and Men, who ordered him to do it. And then we will have justice".

 _Elia Martel, princess of Dorne. You raped her, Gregor Clegane. Your murdered her. You killed her children. I will kill you for it._

"You will do no such thing" Doran's voice came with a tone of sharpness, and Oberyn met his brother's gaze for a little while.

 _You think you can order me around, little man? Because you are my brother? I have killed many men who I thought of as brothers. I poisoned them in the night. I ran them through with my spear. I put my dagger through their throats. Sometimes all at once. You are nothing. Nothing but a little man who cannot stand on his little hurting feet._

But he lowered his gaze and obeyed. He had only so much family left. And Doran was his Prince, after all. As if that meant anything. "You will have your men comply with the Tyrell cripple's request" Doran went on, slandering that brave man Willas in the process. "Getting the Redwyne boys to Sunspear will be a small thing, with little risk for us. But we need something in return".

"Oh, enough of you and your silly trades, brother" Oberyn sighed. He truly, and deeply, wished that he was anywhere but in that room. He wished that he was laughing with his daughters. Or whoring in Lys. Or putting a spear through Tywin Lannister's heart. "He is my friend. I use all my friends, true, but I will not let others do the same".

"If the independent Northern kingdom survives the winter, and if they ally with the Tyrells with all their gold and grain and spears" Doran went on as if he hadn't even spoken his protest, which was incredibly aggravating. "If all that happens, then not only will we have our vengeance stolen from us, but a significant threat stands in the way of our Dragon's return. We need men in the court of Wolves, and knives in the court of Flowers. When the time comes we must be ready to strike hard. And decisively".

"And Myrcella Baratheon?" Oberyon wondered, thinking on the rest of the exchange. "What of her? If we end the Lannister line and bring back the Targaryen kings, marrying her to Trystane will not be…" he paused "the shrewdest of moves".

"We do not hurt little girls in Dorne" Doran answered quietly. "And she is blameless for her grandfather's sins. Her mother, for all her faults, is beautiful. My son will be glad to be promised to such a lovely young woman. A lovely young woman with claims on both the Stormlands and the Westerlands. When she is old enough she will spring forth grandchildren for me with the same claims".

"And of Robb Stark?" Oberyn asked finally. "Courts and girls aside, he will become a problem for us. For our plans". His plans too, now. He was Doran's first lance, after all. His best blade.

"He is young. He has not yet learnt that there are more than only two sides in this war" the First Prince of Dorne mused back, one hand to the cleft in his chin. "And I will use that against him. You worry about your training and your arts, Oberyn. I will make sure that the King in the North does not survive the winter".

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

She had to admit that, as savage as they were, the Northerners certainly knew how to feast.

"– _an old grey cloak that's so battlestained and worn_ " Rymund the Rhymer had swiftly won the favour of the North at Marq Piper's feast by singing many old songs from the North, and the one he sung now, The Old Wolf, was a favourite " _and britches almost threadbare at the knees_ ". He was a good enough singer, though Margaery had heard better. " _A long black chain, each link by dragon forged; a scabbard that's been empty many a day_ -"

" _But not for long!_ " Almost all of the northerners shouted in the audience participation part of the song, something that had made Margaery jump in her seat of honour the first time she had heard it.

" _For when the North rides south for freedom_ " Rymund grinned as he sang on and strummed on his lute " _the one they'll raise to lead them will fly the Old Wolf banner of Winterfell!_ " And as the song rang clear and the tones died softly in the air he rose from his seat by one of the benches in the hall, bowing to the adulation of the North that sat to listen to him. Margaery and her ladies and even Robb Stark himself gave the minstrel a standing ovation, at which he bowed even deeper in thanks.

"I have never heard that song before, your Grace" Margaery confessed as they sat back down and the other musicians began to play idle festive tunes without song from their harps and lutes and flutes and harmonies and drums. "Was it written for your campaign?" She enjoyed the feast. The northerners had brought with them not only their customary energy and rowdiness to the festivities, making it a warm and happy occasion excepting the occasional brawl, but also their customs and their songs. Songs, so many of which were new to her.

"Nay, my Lady" Robb told her as he reached for his cup of wine, his cheeks already flush with the warmth of it. Margaery's were too, though of a different sort as the two of them sat next to each other at the high table of Pinkmaiden's great hall, their throne-like seats pushed so close together that their elbows on their armrests touched. Robb had withdrawn from that earlier in the evening, but their arms all by lay on top of each other now that he had fortified his courage with wine plundered from the Lannister stores. "It's a song of the Company of the Rose, founded by men and women who left the North to become sellswords in Essos after Torrhen knelt to Aegon".

"Hence britches threadbare at the knees" she nodded in understanding and giggled. Giggled, like she was some slip of a girl, and it wasn't even a mummer's farce like her grandmother had taught her. She wondered if it was his presence that made her blush and make her lose her composure, or was it the wine? Perhaps a little bit of both. "Is it about someone in particular, or…?" He was looking at her oddly.

"Hmm?" Robb flinched and pried his eyes from hers. "Oh, I don't know, Margaery. It might be about Torrhen's bastard brother Brandon, who negotiated and led his armies for him. I've nigh on three hundred men of the company in my army. There are another two thousand-or-so on Essos still, but I'd bleed my coffers dry if-" he shook his head and ran his hand through his hair, looking to her in apology. "Pardon me, my Lady. I promised that I would not think of war tonight. I'm in my cups, I ramble, and your eyes drive all sense out of my head".

"I drive all sense out of your head, Robb?" she wondered softly and reached for his hand, putting her fingers by his, running her soft skin over his calluses, marvelling at how they differed in size. "You flatter me, your Grace".

Luckily no one was in earshot, as her ladies were off down to one side and Ser Marq Piper was off carousing with Smalljon and the Umber men. Loras was busy by the Mormont table, where Lyra and Dacy Mormont were holding him down while their mother cackled in sadistic glee as she poured braggot down his gullet from a ridiculously huge drinking horn. And the other Lords – amongst them Rickard Karstark, Galbart Glover and Roose Bolton, whose pale eyes chilled Margaery to her very core – were off amongst their men or retired to their tents and quarters for the night. And the new Maester and her eldest brother were… somewhere. Truthfully she did not trust this Maester Ebbert. Something about him seemed off, untrustworthy.

"It's not flattery if it's the truth" Robb told her earnestly and took a deeper draught of the wine in his silver cup. "Gods strike me down, I am promised to another". Despite her best efforts not to Margaery settled back against her seat with a pout. That prayer she had sent silently to the Seven the night she had fled from Bitterbridge had been answered – but the Wolf of House Stark had too much honour. He couldn't as much as touch her without feeling ashamed. Much less kiss her neck or run his fingers down her spine or anything else of the thousand and one other things that she wanted him to do to her. "Rymund!" Robb shouted as he stood, trying to ease the tension between him and her no doubt. "Another song. Something new this time!"

"I've just the thing, your Grace! It's unfinished and unpolished, but it is new!" the minstrel shouted back as he put his lute to his thigh and strummed while the hall gradually quieted around him. "This one's called 'The Fairborn Banks of Mander'". And then he began to play, a quick and upbeat song to a mournful melody. " _There was a rose, a pretty rose, that grew strong on summer sun_ " he raised his voice aloud as he began " _by the far and fairborn banks of Mander‑lay_ ".

"I think that this one was written for you" Robb leaned in and said to Margaery as the song went on, his breath hot and sweet against her ear. She shivered. "Are you cold?" She was, in truth, for the hall was drafty despite the best attempts at the masons and carpenters to repair the damages that the first Lannister burning had caused, and she had forsaken her coat to bare more of her skin to that honourable twit of a man.

" _Her voice was sweet as heaven, held by bird in summer song – On the far and fairborn banks of Mander‑lay_ ". Why had she even bothered to try and seduce him? He even- "Here" he offered as he lay his grey and white cloak about her shoulders. _Well then, perhaps he isn't a twit_.

"Thank you" she smiled at him and pulled the edges of the cloak, lined with silky fur that felt wonderful against her skin and that was padded with something that was almost the same, closer about her body. "It is… I do not think that I own anything so warm" she told him truly as the song went on. " _But there came a sullen shadow and the lions roved all around_ " The song – it was about the war? " _On the far and fairborn banks of Mander‑lay. And by her tears the waters rose and covered all the ground – of the far and fairborn banks of Mander‑lay_ ".

"It is made from shadowcat pelt and snow shrike eiderdown. I will have one made for you" Robb told her earnestly. "One in your house colours. Green and gold. A rose forever after on your back". Even as he promised Rymund sang on. " _The stags they locked their horns and brought shadows high in fright at the far and fairborn banks of Mander‑lay_ ".

"But I like this one". She cuddled in deeper into its folds and hummed in satisfaction as all parts of her but her feet began to warm. She pulled up her legs and laid the hem of the cloak over them as well. " _And the gardens all around her in the burning blazed so bright by the far and fairborn banks of Mander‑lay_ ".

"Then you may keep it". He seemed to have mustered his courage, running his hands down the outside of the cloak where it covered her shoulders. "You should not be wearing black" he told her suddenly. "You should be wearing bright colours, colours of happiness and joy. Not black. Blessed are the Gods and the Children, how my colours suit you". " _But then from high on North a wolf there came to pry – to the burned and forlorn banks of Mander‑lay. And the beast he growled and snarled, said no rose by him shall cry – on these drowned and fairborn banks of Mander‑lay_ ".

"Would you like me to wear them?" she asked of him, and he nodded back, firmly. "All throughout the winter?" " _He sunk his teeth in all the lions, drove the waters back to sea – and restored that broken forlorn Mander‑lay_ ".

"All throughout the winter and until the end of my days" he answered and let his head fall back hard against the high and ornate oaken backrest of his seat with a thud. _Oh_. She hadn't realised that he meant it like that. Honestly she should have – what else did it look like? She sitting by his side, draped with his cloak like a bride in her husband's at their wedding. " _He howled at all the heavens, made the stags by him to kneel – at his feet down by the banks of Mander‑lay"_.

"I…" she did not know what to respond to that. She knew what she should answer to it – that she'd be glad to, that she'd be his, that she'd be jubilant to join their families together – but those were the answers her grandmother's letters had instructed her to give. She had promised herself that she would be honest with him. "I think I'd like that". Still the answer was not any different.

" _He touched his snout onto her petals but forgot about her thorns - and his blood fell on the banks of Mander‑lay_ ". At her answer a shudder went through him, and he raised his hand to his left eye, taking deep breaths that made his chest heave under his tunic and his muscles stretch against the fabric. "By all rights I should forsake honour" he all but growled at himself. "Every bone in my body tells me to do that. But I cannot". She knew. It wasn't the way his father had raised him, no matter how much he told himself that he should act otherwise. " _And the Wolf that Kissed the Rose came away with bloodied nose – By the far and now so blackened Mander‑lay_ ".

" _He pranced and danced about her, that wolf from high on North – on the to him still so fairborn Mander‑lay_ ". She heard herself laughing, but it was not a happy laugh. It was a sad thing, hurt and scorned. "Roslin Frey is a lucky woman". More than that, she was a dead woman if Margaery ever saw her. She'd put a sword through – well, perhaps not her heart, but at least all of her favourite things before she had her hair shorn from her head. She may not be a murderess, but she was vindictive. " _He begged of her to be with him until he was no more – To be his by the fairborn banks of Mander‑lay_ ".

"Lucky is her father – to extort a promise of marriage from me when I could do nothing but answer aye" he growled out through clenched teeth, and she trembled to see the Wolf angered even as she felt the very same stirring in her heart. "All I've ever seen is a portrait of the damned woman". " _She told him then a no and brought tears to winter eyes – that fell on the bloodied banks of Mander‑lay_ ".

"I see" Margaery let her head fall back to rest against his arm, feeling the warmth of his skin and his muscles there. "Is she prettier than me?" It was a petty question, she knew it and so did he, but this Roslin had robbed her of her Robb before she even knew she wanted him. And all other things she had wanted in life she had gotten. She acted like a spoiled brat, perhaps, but she needed to know never the less. " _She told him she'd wizen in this land of war and spite – that lay by the once so fairborn Mander‑lay_ ".

"Comely enough, but next to you, my Lady?" Robb chuckled humourlessly, almost painfully. "She honestly looks like utter shite". She smiled at that, thinking that he had spent too much time around Smalljon in recent days. " _And the Wolf, won wan and weary, picked the rose up of the mud – of the black and bloodied banks of Mander‑lay_ ".

" _And in his jaws so tenderly he brought her with him home_ ". She turned her smile to him. "Good". And, for an instant, the world was theirs and only theirs as they found eternity in each other's eyes. But the song was ending. " _Far from the fairborn banks of Mander‑lay_ ". And as the tones rang out into silence and the bard stood to take the cheers of his audience Robb rose from his seat too.

"Well done, Master Rymund" he told the minstrel, and the Riverland man bowed skilfully. "A song of your own invention, I take it?" And when the man answered in the affirmative Robb nodded back at him. "For that performance you may ask a boon of me, and if it is in my power to do so I will see it done". Renly had said so too, to a woman that wanted to join his Rainbow guard. It was odd – she hadn't even thought about her dead husband in days.

"Your Grace" Rymund did not even need to think on it. It must have been his wish and dream for a long time. "The life of a wandering songster is wondrous and wonderful, but one day the wandering will shall wane. I shall not always wander, and I will want the same as any man – a wife, a family, food in my belly and a warm place in the world to call my own".

"And let your talent be lost to the world?" Robb thought on it before he made a decision in the matter. "Once the war is over you shall have some land in the Whispering Woods, and you shall have lumber to build an Inn on it with. Tend to that tavern, sing to travellers, and spread your songs like that. Swear yourself to my brother, the lord of that region, and live merrily until the end of your days. That is my command". As the minstrel doubled over in thanks, oozing words of gratitude, Robb still remained standing. "It is late, and I've a war to wage. I will take my leave of you, my good people. Until morning".

"Robb!" Margaery reached for his hand when he turned to leave under the farewells of his people, taking his fingers in hers, holding him back, silently asking him to stay with her. "Where are you going?"

"The godswood" he told her as he gently, but firmly, pulled his hand out of her grasp and out of her reach. "I need to be alone with my thoughts and the Gods. Goodnight, lady Margaery. Gods ward and warm your sleep".

"It's not your gods I want warming my bed, you stubborn mule of a man" she muttered at his back as he left the hall with only a single pair of guards following him. She sighed and looked around the great hall, looking for familiar faces, wondering what she was supposed to do. The day after the next she would return to Highgarden and be out of her... out of Robb's life. And Willas hadn't done a single thing to help her plans bear fruit. She was watching her plans, Grandmother's plans, fail before her, and she did not know what she could do to prevent it.

Damn it all, she felt so helpless. And heartbroken. _Pathetic._

"Blessed be the Father" Loras exclaimed as he climbed, in a rambling stupor, up to the seats of honour to lean against the side of her chair, Elinor by his side in concern. "These damn Northerners must be invulnerable to drunkenness. Hellish she-beasts, the Mormont women. I think" he added with a pale face and a weak voice "I think one of them groped me. Groped me!" He shuddered, and despite the violation Margaery could not help but smile at her brother's predicament. It was good to see him living again, even if the sorrow and the black rage was never far from his mind. She opened her mouth to tell him that - and nothing but gasp and a shudder came out. "Margaery" he grew serious and concerned "what's wrong?"

"I-" Oh, fire-blasted seven hells, she had imbibed too much wine, and now it had _Robb_ ed her of her ability to speak. "I-" her shoulders shook, her breathing turned ragged, and she could feel the now so foreign sensation in her eyes come to her, like it done when she found out that she was nothing but a pawn in the political games of her family all those years ago. "I need some air. Excuse me" she rose from her seat and hurried away from them, away from her escort and out into the darkened hallways of Pinkmaiden Castle.

In the gloom she hurried away from the raucous laughter and ruckus of the great hall, fleeing them all and the broken, burning, aching thing in her chest. Out into the darkness she went, with only the torches as her guide and companions, and as she came onto the gallery overlooking the gardens after hurrying up several flights of stone stairs, the gallery just above the fencing hall, she stopped and stared out into the moonlight, gripping the stone railings so hard that her knuckles turned white. There was a hard breeze that night, brisk and cold and smelling like a promise of frost, yet somehow nothing but her cheeks were touched by the wind-

His cloak. She was still wearing his cloak. His heavy cloak, as comforting and warm as a mother's love. His cloak that smelled of him. His cloak that but for a single grey wolf upon the back was all white. Snowy white. Bridal white. Her eyes stung, and for the first time in years she felt tears run down her cheeks.

"My Lady!" From down the gallery, past the moonlit railing colonnade, Elinor came hurrying towards her with Loras in tow. "You ran away from the festivities-" Margaery turned her back to both of them, so that they would not see her face, and retreated further down the gallery, but her knees were trembling and her shoulders shaking. She hadn't the strength to remain standing. She almost passed an alcove in the wall facing the gallery but stopped and sat herself down in it. Her escort – her brother and her cousin – came to her, and stopped still when they saw her tears.

"That northern ass!" Loras bristled and seized the hilt of his sword with one hand, ready to pull it free and make to start carving his way through anyone who would oppose him. "I will decapitate the man who makes my sister cry!"

"The Gods make me cry, Loras" Margaery wiped at her cheeks and let out a shuddering breath while Elinor came around to take her by the shoulders and comfort her. She took her hand, and though it was soft and warm – soft! Soft! All too soft! – it was far from the touch that would have soothed her and made her tears dry up.

"Is he lacking in honour, my Lady?" Elinor asked in a probing voice, and Margaery shook her head. "What is it then? Surely if he is a good and honest man, and I've seen the way he looks at you-"

"He has all too much honour, my sweet" Margaery shook her head wryly. "I know how he looks at me. All but undresses me with his eyes. But he never does more than look" she let her head fall onto Elinor's shoulders, and that other maid held her close. "It is pathetic" Margaery whispered against the fabric of Elinor's dress. "Crying like this, over a man. Like I was a girl of thirteen once again. What sorcerous webs has he spun around my heart?" A sob went through her again, and so she whispered as her family stood to comfort. "Your Gods curse you, Robb Stark" she breathed out so quietly that not even Elinor could hear her. "And curse my heart". _I will not say it. I will not say that my heart is breaking._

 _I will not say that I am in love_.

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

From the bushes amongst the trees down below that Essosi-style gallery Robb Stark listened to Summer-Sun Flower-Maid weep, and his heart bled. He sighed loudly at it all. It was all so stupid.

 _My honour is not foolish, Grey Wind_. Robb turned and began to silently pad away from the interior of the castle and the Gods' Wood that lay within its stone walls. It had a Heart's Tree, a real one, a slender thing that was still young and uncarved and off to one corner, hidden where no one could see it, but the Gods lived there still. They could not see there – they had no carved eyes to see with – but they could still hear. They had few leaves to speak with, but they could still speak. And the Gods would say that Robb was being stupid. Like an arrogant pup not yet grown to his teeth.

All honour was foolish. He could still smell Summer-Sun's tears on the wind. He did not like it. He bared his teeth. He did not like it one bit. _She might be doing this to work against me, Grey Wind. She might be out to seduce me for the sake of her family and my crown_. The one who birthed Thunder‑Voice- _Thunder Voice?_ The big one. The one who had that long steel claw that smelled of human bone. _Smalljon?_ Yes, Thunder-Voice. The one who birthed him was of the Cold Lands, wasn't she? She had come to steal from Old-Thunder's flocks, kill his pack, but he changed her mind. Humans change.

 _How do I know that she truly loves me? I thought that I could move past that, move past my fears, but I cannot. What if she has been lying to me, scheming against me?_ All humans scheme. Even you.

 _Wait-_. Do not be stupid. When Winter comes we look after our own packs first. We feed our own packs first. _What-_. We kill those who threaten our pack, not others. Make her of your pack, put your scent on her, and she will go on to scheme for you instead.

 _You… you are talking to me. Really talking. You've never done that before_. Our link grows stronger. You use it more, even though the Green in your blood is scentless and weak. And the Old Powers are returning. Summer-Sun is part of it. I know not how, but she is. There is something of the Bringer of Springs in her. The Eater of Infants. Of course she will scheme. Your feelings for her do not matter in that.

 _But what about love? What about what she feels about me?_ It does not matter. Never have. Never will. Her feelings for you do not matter. Only humans think that the feelings of others matter to them. _It matters if they are reciprocated_. Does it truly? You can never know for sure. Unless you go inside of her thoughts, that is, and _that_ would kill any love she would feel for you. If you had enough Green in you to even do that. Which you have not. Think about your own heart. What is in your heart except for blood? Find out. And act accordingly.

 _Gods damn me… I am in love with her_.

Of course you are. She hangs on you like a fawn by a doe. And you think her good to mate with. Good to bring your pups into the world. Around you she all but coos like a bitch in heat. I have smelled both of you when you touch each other. Humans are disgusting – and smelly. She is less smelly than most. Her saving grace. And her honeycake treats are delicious. I quite like her. So do you.

 _I am a fool for it_. Of course you are. All humans are fools. And dumb. Honour is foolishness. You should forsake it. Like you were told to do. _You know- you know of the vision I had? Of what the Gods told me?_ I know what you heard. I know what you saw. And so do you. Do not ask me about it. _Why?_

Because you know what you saw, yet you do not see. All humans are fools. They are easily scared, like horses. And like horses they think that they are safe when they are not. They cut down the Heart's Trees. They kill the Children. They hunt all prey to death. But prey repopulate. Trees regrow. And the Children return. Magic returns. All of it. _What? I don't_ -. Of course you do not understand. You are human. You are a fool.

 _Now_ get _back_ into _your_ own _head_.

Robb panted and struggled for breath as he was thrust back into his own body and into the muted silence of the godswood as heard by his human ears. That… that had never happened before. Whatever sorcery that allowed him to enter, at least in part, Grey Wind's mind, was getting stronger, more pronounced. Like a distant screech, a ringing in his ear, a spectre of a sound in his head, he heard the cry of clade of young dragons on the wind, growing ever larger.

The world was changing around him. Someone was rewriting the rules of existence in Westeros – and he did not like it one bit.

"Your Grace!" Robb looked up from where he was sitting, on the ground under a sentinel with his back propped up against one of its roots, to see Willas Tyrell come hobbling down the path towards him. "Fancy meeting you here. All alone on a fine night as this – I'd say that you were a man after my own temperament if I thought that that were a good thing". Robb doubted him. He was most likely scheming, along with Margaery. He wasn't so naïve as to think that the heir to Highgarden had travelled all the way to the Riverlands, especially being a cripple and all, out of mere brotherly concern. Willas was there, but for what? His friend, who had an interest in the Mountain? His sister and her family, guided by some unseen puppeteer? Or something darker and more nefarious still?

"Willas" Robb climbed to his feet, trying very hard not to look at the Tyrell heir's leg. It was a hard thing to do, as it drew the eye, all twisted and turned in on itself, noticeable even past the airy legs of his britches. He didn't even seem to have his knee in the right place. Bollocks to not staring, it gave him the shivers, and that in turn made him feel like the worst of men. "Didn't see you at the feast".

"Oh, I left after my Lady sister had you toast to Lord Blackwood's memory the seventh time, your Grace" Willas gestured to one of the benches – _benches? In a godswood? Bloody southrons and their tender arses_ – and Robb nodded, remaining standing as Willas seated himself with great effort, swinging his twisted stem of a leg out before him by his hands. "I fear that travelling all this way has sapped my strength for drinking and carousing, and as for dancing" he gestured to himself with a smile. "I doubt I'd be any use to anyone on the dancefloor. My sister had you drink a lot, on reflection. If I did not know any better, I'd say that she is trying her hardest to seduce you".

 _Your Gods curse you, Robb Stark_. "You do know" he answered the man back, cutting the idle bullshite short. "She _is_ trying to do it". _Gods know, she has all but succeeded_. "And you're here to… it's not to tell her off, that's for sure. You'd have done so already. I may be young in years, but I've fought enough battles to know an ambush when I see one. I tend to turn ambushes around on my enemies, Tyrell. Traps work both ways".

"Well then, allow me to speak to you in all due candour, your Grace" Willas inclined his head, his smile fading as he looked up at Robb. "I have heard about the actions of Joffery… he's a bastard, but I'm unsure whether or not he's a Hill or a Waters… Anyway, I've heard of him. He is a screeching lunatic, ruled by his mother the same way a handler rules a rabid hound. That is to say, not at all. A mad dog. And a true king knows restraint. He rules by the grace of his subjects. From what I have heard of Loras's and Margaery's reports back to Highgarden she believes you to be such a king. Which itself is doubly impressive, considering your legacy".

"Reports back to Highgarden?" Robb wondered, thinking of all the ravens that had flown from Pinkmaiden to the Reach and back. "And why is it doubly so?"

"Oh, my grandmother rules the courts of Highgarden in all but name. She was all but jumping with glee when she heard that her daughter had set her mind to win the heart of Robb Stark, the Young Wolf". _So it's the grandmother, is it? Good to know_. "She was the one that drove my sister to these plans properly, as far as I know. And as for you, your Grace" he paused and averted his eyes from Robb's thoughtful expression, looking up at the starry night overhead instead. "They say that the Starks of old were wild men" he began, a distant edge to his tone.

"They say that the winds of the North lived in their blood. Dark eyed, sullen, quick to anger, given to flaring emotions, great passions and a hypnotic charisma. Without as much the North would never have bent their knees to them. 'The Targaryens of Ice', one of my books call them. Your late father, Lord Eddard, was not like that by all accounts. I suspect that seeing almost all of your family die around you will turn any man quiet and stern in the very best of developments. Like Aegon, the third of his name. And so do you seem, too. But it is still there. I can sense it, somehow. The 'Wolfsblood', one of my books call it. The wild blood. The hungry blood. Such a heritage would turn any man into a savage even if they had just a hint of it in them. Your grandfather had it. Your uncle had it. And by the last hours of his life, your late Lord father had it. I wonder if you have it strongly, your grace. And still you show restraint. Which makes you, as I said before, doubly impressive".

"I don't know about 'Wolfsblood'" Robb, having ignored almost all of what Willas had just told him, answered in a distant voice. She had pursued him first. Her intentions… it was only later that it had become a scheme, or so Willas thought. _No more doubts_. The first days she must have been true to him. _She must have_. He had laid his colours around her shoulders.

 _Would you like me to wear them? All throughout the winter?_

 _All throughout the winter and until the end of my days._

 _I think I'd like that._

 _Forsake honour._

"Forgive me, Willas" Robb bent his head towards the Tyrell man, who looked back at him in mild surprise as he turned on his heel and headed for the castle interior, hurry in his step. "I've someone to speak to". As he went, he glanced back to see Willas smiling. And why wouldn't that broken rose smile?

Robb was about to see all his chickens come home to roost.

Margaery was still sitting in the gallery overlooking the gardens, though now her brother had gone elsewhere and left her with only Elinor by her side. She was still wearing his cloak around her, and damn it all if it wasn't a good and welcome sight to his eyes. He called out her name, and she stood and looked up at him, pain in her eyes, and made to turn away and hurry back to her room before he caught up with her. He caught her by the wrist and turned him around to face him. "Margaery, please, listen to me-"

"Why? So you can go on and on about your precious honour, like you always do?" She had been crying. Gods damn him, he had made her cry. "I am no glutton for punishment. I do not like pain or rejection. Please, your Grace, just let me go to my chambers and leave me to my dreams-"

"Hush, Margaery, please" Robb asked her and took both of her hands in his. Small, warm, dainty and graceful, and her skin was so soft and gentle to the touch. "I have caused you hurt, and I am sorry for that. But I need to know something". He brought her hands to his lips and kissed her knuckles, eyeing her eyes all the while. "Is this a ploy? Are you… have you done and said all those things just to twist me around your littlest finger? Have you done this all to trick me into loving you?"

"No… and yes" she told him in a whisper, and it was as if he had been hit with a warhammer over the back of his head. On the outside he stood as tall and steady as ever, but on the inside he went empty and as still as the waters in the ponds in the godswood of Karhold. "At first, and not all of it, and-" she breathed in hard and yanked one hand out of his grip, going to her cheek to wipe away the last of her tears. Even after crying she managed to look beautiful.

"It was supposed to be a scheme" she said at last in a weak voice. "It was supposed to be, but then you went and ruined it with your muscles and your valour and your eyes and-" she breathed in hard to collect herself. "I will not say it" she whispered to herself. _What is she going on about now? Well, no matter. I know what I need to know._

"They'll curse me for an oathbreaker, you know" he told her, and she fell silent as her handmaiden – Elinor, was it? A cousin or second cousin to Margaery or something – backed away into the shadows to let them have their solace in togetherness. "When I break my word to House Frey. There might be a way around it, but I wouldn't put too much stock in that. And" he laid her hand to her cheek, wet and cold against the warmth of his palm "I will not do it. I will not lay with you dishonestly. I will not make you the king's whore. But you have my word" he laid his other arm around her waist and pulled her close to him "as the King in the North. I will make you my wife. If you will have me".

She looked at him then, the starlight reflected in her eyes as the winds of winter breezed about them. "I will" she said at last, a quiver on her voice as her smile beamed at him in the moonlit night, and then, in a whisper almost marvelling at herself: "I am in love".

"So am I" he answered back before he kissed her.

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** Finally! Amirite? Oh, those two crazy kids. No, they are not getting married yet. _Yet_.

When will they ever learn that this is the World of Ice and Fire (and some other stuff), and that in that world there are no happy endings? Ah, I'm just kidding… or am I?

Also, you thought the title of the story was just some poetic extravagance, didn't you? Well, it wasn't. All chapter titles are based on words spoken or thought in the chapter, as you might have noticed, as is the story title in and of itself. As I am an amateur musician I wrote "the Fairborn Banks of Mander" myself. Not that it was hard. Didn't need a lot of creativity. And it's not meant to be good. It is, for Rymund, a work in progress.

Not that he'll ever get to finish it.

The first song, the Old Wolf, is a lyrical rewrite of an Irish revolt song called "The Broad Black Brimmer". If you didn't like the songs and the singing – it's background stuff. No need to get worked up over it. And Tolkien wrote songs for Lord of the Rings, as did Mr Martin for ASoIaF. Mine are considerably worse, but there you go.

Lastly, I'd say it's pretty obvious who Oberyn Martell was based on: _Hello. My name is Oberyn Martell. You killed my sister. Prepare to die._ I am the biggest Oberyn fanboy on this side of the Baltic sea, so I'm just going to stand by that needless little cutaway in the middle of the chapter. Okay? Okay.

I hope that you have enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	8. Winter Times

Chapter Eight – Winter Times

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

And he kissed her _. She really does taste of roses._

Her lips were soft, sweet, unpainted, and instantly moved with his as soon as they came together. He put one arm around her back, another around her slender shoulders, and he felt one of her hands move up into her hair and pull him closer to her. Her tongue pushed at his lips - but he pulled back. She made a sound of disproval, almost like a whine, pouting at him as he withdrew. "Really?" she complained. "All but two months have I been after you, and now-"

"Less than what you were waiting on?" Robb found himself smiling as he asked her if he met her expectations in romantic matters. "I haven't had any practice at kissing for a while, so it might be a mess-"

"You are fantastic at it, your Grace" she smiled back at him and pulled him back to her, and so he kissed her. Again. Though this time she was doing most of the work – one hand in his hair, the other on the back of his neck, pulling him hard into her, pressing herself close into him, and it would be easy, _so, so easy_ , to lose himself in her embrace and take her in his arms even more than he already had. His cloak looked good on her. Damned good. He had an inkling to rip all other things off of her, until the only things his cloak touched was her naked skin, and then hoist her over his shoulder, bring her back to his chambers and pull the net and pins out of her hair. And then drape her hair over his pillows as-

 _Restraint. A king knows restraint_.

"Gods, how I hate myself for this" he muttered as he gently took her by the shoulders and pushed her back and a little away. She was disappointed, he could tell, but not by much going by her smile. It reminded him of a cat that had caught a pigeon, for some reason. And he supposed that he had played right into her plans. She had all right to be smug and victorious. "I swore an oath to marry the Frey girl" he told her, and her face fell, and there was a wrench of pain in his chest at the sight. "No, I mean, I cannot break that oath. _I_ cannot. But… there is a way, I think, without resorting to dishonour. I'm not quite sure yet. I will speak to my advisors about that. Can you be patient, my Lady?"

"If you start fencing without a shirt on again I will make no promises" she told him, followed by a giggle that made him laugh. She seemed… relieved. "I will trust your methods, my King" she lowered her voice into a whisper, and her hands that had been about his head and his neck trailed down to lay flat on his chest, her fingers running up along his stomach and those of his ribs that were unhurt. "Do whatever you think is best. But please" she urged before she withdrew "be quick about it".

"You should go to your chambers, Margaery" he breathed out slowly and let her step away from him, watching her as she turned around, forcing himself to keep his eyes off of her and on the moonlit gardens. "It is late, and we are foolish with wine".

"It is also winter" she told him, lingering by his side, holding his hand in both of hers. "This place is not as far north as the North, but it is still much colder than I am used to. Elinor and I sleep side by side for warmth, but it is still so cold, and I have difficulties in falling asleep proper. Perhaps-" she yelped in surprise and mock distress as he drew her back to him and hugged her to him with one arm around her narrow waist. By the look in his eyes she giggled. "Your Grace!"

"Do not tempt me, Southron wench" he growled and kissed her breath away, until when he at last withdrew from her and she slumped against him, panting, looking up at him with starry eyes. Gods, it would have been so easy. To just take her. To take whatever he wanted. And why shouldn't he? He was a king, after all. And doing what they wanted and taking whatever they pleased was the prerogative of kings. Why shouldn't he?

 _A king knows restraint. Do that and you are no better than Joffery_.

He had half a mind to beat all sense out of his head and do whatever it was his blood wanted him to do. But he didn't. He restrained himself. _For some stupid reason_. "Think about me tonight" he gave her a fleeting kiss over her mouth before he put his lips to her ear, and she shivered at his whisper and his breath. "And on the morrow we can think about our future. Agreed?" She nodded, and Robb looked up from her and swept his gaze over the gallery, seeing Elinor Tyrell in the distance, standing there with her back almost pointedly turned and a redness up over her ears.

"Lady Elinor!" he summoned her attention, and she jumped in startled surprise before she turned towards him. "Ward the Lady Margaery back to her chambers, will you? And if anything happens to her, I'll hold you personally responsible" he warned as Elinor took Margaery by the shoulders and the two moved back away from him, Margaery smiling at him all the while. "I intend to make her my queen. Goodnight, my Ladies" he bowed to them, and they curtsied back before he turned his back on the, wrenching his eyes away from Margaery as he headed off into the darkness, hearing their giggling behind his back. As he walked he found a swagger in his step and a smirk on his face. Damn it all, after everything that had happened these last few months it felt good to be truly happy.

He wondered what Father would have thought of Margaery. He was a little saddened at that, but he would not let the memories bring his joy down. His father would have wanted him to smile. He himself had said that Robb had been a little too like him, that he didn't smile enough. _You'll have your wish father, and your justice. If the Gods be good_. But first he would have to attend to these matters. He had a lot to do before his dreams became reality. A plan was taking shape inside his mind, but he would have to act quickly. First of all:

Find Smalljon.

"Your Grace!" the Umber men guarding the half a dozen proper rooms and outer barracks set aside for them, out along the walls of the outer courtyard, knelt as he and a double tail of guards marched up towards the main doors. Unlike his own men, in bright chainmail and light plate and grey and white tabards, the Umber men favoured rough dark leathers, heavy hides and thick furs laid over studded jerkins and umber red gambesons, but they knelt just the same. "Smalljon's not to be seen 'till dawn, m'lord" said one of the men before the barrack's doors, a commander going by the fox pelts laid over his shoulders. "He's sort of indelicate, so he is-"

"If you're afraid that he'll shout at you I'll go see him myself" Robb told the guards and was quickly granted passage, and he couldn't help but to roll his eyes as he made it up the stairs by the walls to the rooms normally set aside for officers but now fell to berserker chiefs and outrider commanders. The sounds coming from the far of the six rooms, the one that Smalljon had taken, made it clear what he was doing with his sleeping hours. He stopped before the door and looked back to his four guards with a raised eyebrow. One of them, a young lad but tall and broad for his age, blushed from head to toe while the other three grinned. "Right then, let's see how he likes it done to him" Robb grinned and turned back to the door before he kicked it open.

He had to admit that seeing the door splinter before his foot and hearing the thud as it slammed open gave quite the happy feeling. No wonder why Smalljon seemed to love doing it.

"Bloody Gods!" Smalljon Umber, having just been flat on his back on his bed with his new mistress, that black-haired whore from Stony Sept, bouncing energetically on top of him, threw the woman aside on the bed as if she weighed nothing and jumped to his feet, battleaxe in hand. "I'll fucking kill every last-" he quieted when he saw that it was Robb standing there, unarmed and uncloaked, with the torchlight making his shadow dance behind his back. "Robb? Your Grace? What the blazes-?"

"Put on your bloody britches, man" Robb's eyes stayed fixed on his comrade at arm's face. He had no wish to look at his friend's cock – not now, not ever. "At once. You too" he looked to the shapely young woman, jerking his head at the gown and shift discarded in the corner, hardly even noticing her nakedness. "I need you to fetch my mother. And if you keep at it like that when Smalljon brings you with him into the field I will have you gagged. My soldiers need sleep, not moaning in their ears all night". He looked back to Smalljon, who was hurriedly pulling on his clothes. "Fetch Dacey, Owen, Ronnel Stout and Ebbert. You know, that Maester that came with the Tyrell band? I want you all in my solar inside half an hour". He turned on his heel and made to march back out, but stopped in the doorway on his way. "We're about to play at politics".

Well, as it turned out, his friends and a northern Maester, whom he had persuaded Willas to let into his service since Luwin was still in Winterfell and because the man was Northern and perhaps could be trusted, were not that much help. He hoped for some insight into the political process of history, but he was given naught.

"The records are unclear, your Grace" Ebbert told him, furrowing his brow into a pensive scowl as Robb, and all the others with him, all of them half-asleep and half-drunk, kept looking at him expectantly. "The history of the North is long, your Grace. Sometimes, like under Edderion Stark, there was a… a concert of lords. Like a small council, but with members from all of the Houses of the North come to represent their families. Votes were cast, voices heard – modelled after the free councils of the Valyrian Freehold. But under Theon Stark and Brandon Ice-Eyes, amongst others, the local and lesser lords had all but no say. An absolute monarchy, your Grace. In the later cases the North was long at war. I suspect that those two are the ones whose examples we should be following, if anything".

"That's about as helpful to the battle at hand as wings are on a horse" Dacey muttered from aside, her sword laid over the lap of her gown as she sharpened it to pass the time, irritation obvious on her brow. She had been forced to leave not one but two handsome young men who had been warming her bed, and so she was a bit snappish. "You could just break your word to the Freys, your Grace" she supplied with a look to Robb at the head of the table. "He's not too highly regarded-"

"Walder Frey is a Riverlord, and a rich one at that. His support, and that of his soldiers, is vital to our cause" Ronnel Stout, the principal commander of the Barrowdown men and other House Dustin bannermen in Robb's host, a short man with his black hair braided long down his back, a fashion common to the men of Goldengrass. "He controls the way to the North. And, more than that, the King's reputation is at stake. If your Grace is perceived as an Oathbreaker-"

"Piss on Walder Frey" Smalljon rumbled and crossed his mighty arms before his chest. "Oathbreaker or not, that fuckwit's got no honour. I've heard the stories. Even in the Shadow of the Wall we've got them. The 'Late Walder'. Turns his cloak one way or the other, to suit the fucking wind".

"Something most Southrons do, mate" Owen Norrey wrapped his plaid closer around himself and rubbed his tired and drunken eyes. "Their lands are too soft. It doesn't teach them to stick by it like we do. But I see the cleverness in this, so I do your Grace" he nodded at Robb. "If your Lords force you to abandon this Frey lass for a fancier match you're not an Oathbreaker. None needs to know that you were the one suggesting the forcing in the first place".

"Bugger Oathbreaking" Dacey interjected, a vicious scraping of stone on steel coming with her words. "It's still wrong. And it's not merely that. What'll the Southrons think, aye, when they come to hear that the King in the North is hectored by his own men? Who rules Winter then, when the Lords on his side think that they can do as they please?" She looked back to Robb, stern and serious. "It'll make you look weak, your Grace".

"Perhaps they will favour this supposed weakness" Mother spoke up for the first time, and all of them looked to her where she was sitting in the corner, meant to speak for the Riverlander perspective in the matter. "Robb, give this power to the Northerners and they will love you for it. They will bring more of their wishes to you, thinking that you will grant them. If they are encouraged to work against you they must have been harbouring treasonous sentiments for a long time already. And perhaps other Lords will follow you more willingly, if they believe that it will give them greater autonomy".

"Bloody Southron reasoning, that" Ronnel Stout breathed out hard and ran his hand down his clean-shaved face. "As twisted and convoluted as a weirwood's roots. Your Grace, if I may ask?" Robb nodded and waved him on. "Break the betrothal, and you break with the Freys. You would not risk that without a better match in mind. May I ask-?"

"Isn't it bloody obvious?" Dacey cocked an eyebrow at Ronnel as Owen snickered and Smalljon chuckled, and even Mother smiled for some reason. She knew? He hadn't even told her yet. He had summoned her, the Maester and four members of his honour guard – each from a different direction and people in the North to speak for. "It's the one that's been batting her eyelashes at him at every turn. Big brown eyes, shapely yet slender, all that brown hair and that sweet voice of hers-"

"Are you the one that's sweet on her?" Smalljon drawled, to which Dacey narrowed her eyes and raised her now razor-sharp sword with a smirk. "Aye, aye, I get the gist of it. Well" he leant back in his seat and looked like he wished for a pint of ale "you know what they say about girls from the Reach. I saw the painting of the Frey girl, the one that's half Rosby going by all the ermine behind her likeness. Aye, I know a little about the heraldry of the South. Bella's been teaching me. She looked skinny, that Frey girl. Pale. Crowlander girls don't put strong babies into this world, or a lot of them". Robb stopped, finding himself staring into nothingness as those around the table looked to him. Slowly a blush started to spread on his cheeks. He could not help it.

"Isn't it a wee bit too early to concern ourselves with this just yet?" Owen wondered. "I mean, his Grace is younger than me. He's got plenty of time to think of having children later in his life".

"That'd be true – if we weren't running a Kingship here" Smalljon pointed out. "The best way to ensure the sovereignty of the North is by breeding heirs. And lots of them. Fast. The Starks have been desolated by the Spring Sickness and misfortune ever since Torrhen knelt to suck the Dragon's cock. Justice of the Gods, that. There's only a single generation of Starks left – and only three of them will ever carry on the family name. If I were his Grace I'd start making heirs this bloody hour".

"Trust me, I am more tempted to do just that than you know" Robb told Smalljon, and the Umber man grinned back while Mother gave him a hard look, making him blush even further and avert his gaze. Bollocks to it, it felt incredibly awkward talking about such matters in the presence of the woman that had birthed him. No matter how old he got. "Now, each of you – what will the lords of your regions say. Owen: what of the Mountain clans and the Flints?"

"Methinks the Flints aren't going to make a fuss, but the Burley man's going to get narky, since Burley's sworn to Umber and all" Owen scratched at his bushy black beard. "Each of the lords with unwed lasses will, your Grace. If you break with Whoring Walder, they'll each try to marry off their own sprogs to you". He puffed up his cheeks and breathed out hard. "Everyone's going to be up-skelled for shite, your Grace. 'S not my place to doubt, but… you sure this is prudent?"

"It is prudent enough" Ebbert went next, unused to speaking of matters political. Around his neck Robb counted one link in gold, one in silver, one in black iron, two in pale steel and two in tin and several many more in copper. "My father would have argued on my sister Gwyn's behalf – was he here, and if our… _their_ House had any power. The Wolfswood Houses, from the Bay of Ice to Tallhart Lake, will stand by you in this, more or less. They will bare teeth if the other Lords try to vy for the right to marry into House Stark, though".

"The Stony Shore will follow the lead of Maege Mormont" it then turned to Dacey, and she sighed before she went on. "But my mother's going to try and wed you to one of her daughters. I think that she'd like having grandchildren with the name Stark. Probably be Lyra, or Jory – Jorelle, I mean. She's probably flowered by now". Robb noted that while such was no doubt the truth, the most likely candidate to be married off to him would have been Dacey herself, given her proximity to him as a member of his honour guard. He supposed that she was pretty enough, but he had never fancied her. Not in that way. He looked onto Ronnel next, wanting to hear from the Barrowdown men and the southern parts of the North.

"Ryswell, Dustin and Manderly will be your strongest supporters in wooing the Lady Margaery, your Grace" Ronnel Stout assured him readily. "The Barrowlands and the Rills have long have stronger connections to the South than most other regions. Wendel Manderly will bring up the name of one of his sisters – though it will be perfunctory at best. He won't mean anything by it – but the more pious Lords will take offence by it anyway".

"My da would have liked you to wed one of my sisters" Smalljon spoke last, rubbing his brow with the palm of his hand. "Gods know I have too many of them in Last Hearth as is. As for the Houses along the Shivering Sea… Hornwood don't have anything to bargain with, neither does Houses Locke or Waterman, but Karstark – he'll press his cause the hardest. Alys Karstark is your kinswoman, and the best match you could find in the North. Arguably. As for Bolton – who ever knows whatever the fucking Leech is going to do? My advice, your Grace? Keep them fractured, make them argue, and then make them know that Margaery Tyrell is the best bride any of them could have asked for. Not of their own – but not of anyone else's, neither. Best of one world and worst of another".

Robb, seeing the wisdom of Smalljon's counsel, dismissed them all shortly thereafter after telling them to call for a council of his sworn lords at the very crack of dawn.

Unfortunately, things started to escalate very quickly.

"You would wed a Southron slip of a girl?" Maege Mormont questioned from opposite Robb at the round table in his greater solar, her arms crossed before her chest and her gaze fixed on him and his. "What the bloody treetrunks is wrong with my daughters, eh? If you're going to break with the Freys, why not a Mormont woman? Is Dacey too old for you? Alysane already got children? Lyra's young and spirited, and she's got much wider hips and bigger tits than any-"

"A Mormont? Direwolf to bear?" Rickard Karstark cut her off with a mocking sneer, causing the Mormont woman to narrow her eyes at him and raise an armoured finger in warning. "Bugger that. Should be my Alys, so it should. She's the fairest lass in all the land, and she's-"

"Sod that – should be my sister Wynafryd" Wendel Manderly said from aside, one hand laid proudly over his fattening girth beneath his chainmail. "Unlike the rest of you we've never rebelled, were never kings in the North on our own. We've always been true. We've always been Stark men. Our loyalty is never in question-"

"Your Grace" Ser Kyle Condon, speaking for House Cerwyn, began quietly from just to Robb's side, trying to push his way past Smalljon and Owen who flanked him on either side. "My captive lord Medger Cerwyn has a grown daughter. Your family and theirs have always been on friendly terms. They were one of your first sworn bannermen when the Kingdom of Winter first was founded. Sure, Jonelle might not be the comeliest of lasses, but-"

"My Lord Howland's daughter Meera has flowered, and she is unwed" Jackel Fenn, representing the Crannogmen contingent in Robb's army, supplied from aside on behalf of the marshes and the Neck and House Reed. "There is no girl more graceful than her in all of Westeros, and we have always been faithful to-"

"Fuck the Reeds, and fuck the Crannogmen" said Bran Burley, of clan and House Burley sworn to House Umber rather than the Starks themselves, with a glance towards Smalljon who was standing beside Robb. "M'lord Umber's got four daughters – a single and one group of triplets! – and his Grace can bloody well have his pick! They are tall, fair, sturdy, made for whelping babes-!"

"One more fucking word out of you, Karstark!" Maege thrust her finger in Lord Rickard's face as the squabbles began in earnest. "One more fucking word out of you, and by the Gods, I will burry my mace in your ornery fucking face!"

"You can go stick your head under water and bloody well drown yourself, you fat Manderly cunt!" Bryke of Skagos, one of the chief berserkers who marched in Robb's own household troops, hissed across the table from Wendel. "You Manderlys're as bad as the fucking Southrons! No, worse! They've got the decency to stay where they fucking belong!"

"Umber?! To Stark?!" Galbart Glover shouted at Burley, eyes wide in affronted rage. "I'll have my fingers fed to Greatjon's Wildling whore before I'll see accursed cannibals wedded into House Stark!"

"Enough". At Robb's word they all fell quiet and settled down, shoving swords back into their sheathes and axes and maces back into their belts. Robb should have known that it was a mistake, putting the matter to a vote. "All of you will be quiet for one bloody moment. Now: anyone of you who would oppose me breaking with the Freys – raise your hands". Not a one of them as much as twitched. "All those of you who are for it-" before he even had time to finish the sentence they had all raised their hands and said "aye". _Well then_. "Seems there is little love for House Frey in the North".

"Walder Frey is a renowned whorer, a miser and a coward" Roose Bolton, who had stood silent through all the arguing and all the threats, spoke up from the back of the group, and as he spoke a few of the others shied away from him as much as they could. "That lends itself not to a good reputation. I cast my vote in favour for it all. Our King should wed the Tyrell girl".

Robb narrowed his eyes in hard thought, wondering why the Leechlord possibly agreed with him for once. When Roose Bolton agreed with anyone, surely it meant that that person was doing something nefarious, or at least something cruel beyond reason? Or maybe Roose's reputation was undeserved. Much of it was his House's, after all. And due to all the leechings. "Why are you for it, Bolton?" Smalljon, having had the same thought as Robb, asked in great suspicion. "Last time I heard you were no friend to Southrons, and you're married to a Frey".

"My own relationship with the Freys aside, which has no bearing on this… How many men do we have?" Bolton asked the council, to which no one answered. "A little less than twenty-one thousand at fighting strength. Do any of you think that with so few we could guard our back, hold our winnings, invade the Westerlands, lay siege to Lannisport and Casterly Rock and still be able to defend our home holds against the Ironborn? And war against Stannis? There are a hundred thousand swords in the Reach. Even with only half of them, with only a tenth of them, we could win this war in months instead of years".

"And so the voice of pragmatism speaks" Robb noted with a nod, and they all looked back to him again. "I'm not marrying into them – if this is agreed to – nor am I making them part of my kingdom. I am marrying her into House Stark. I am forging an alliance. They'd provide us with grain, with swords, with open roads for our soldiers and closed gates for our enemies. In return" he paused. "We have still yet to work out terms or formalise it all. Well see to it then. Now" he cleared his throat "cast your votes".

Four hours later he marched out of that cramped and smelly room, leaving the mulling bickering of his Lords behind as he went to find his Mother and inform her of his decision. She deserved to know first. And… it was good to speak to her again. He knew that she still saw him as only a boy, and that she had other children to care for, but Robb had thousands of them. All the North were his siblings, every man and woman and child, and he fought to set them all free.

Mother was sitting in the gardens, with Willas and Loras and Willas's Maester Ebbert - didn't Lord Whitehill have a boy named Ebbert at the Citadel? - gathered around one of the benches as they made arrangements for the travels of the coming day. Loras gave him a hard look, Willas gave him a challenging smile, his Mother gave him a look of concern. He was glad that she was speaking to him again. He hadn't been avoiding her - not wilfully, anyway - but he had kept his distance. Things had been said and done between them that he suspected had opened a rift that would never truly close, but he was willing to put it behind him. The Lady Catelyn had only tried to gain access to the Kingslayer twice, after all, and he could not fault her for something that she had not done. But he had no eyes for Mother that morning. Only for the centre bench beneath the rosebushes, and the one sitting on it.

Only Margaery.

She rose as she saw him, giving him a nervous smile and a stutter. "Robb-" she began as he marched over to her, his eyes fleeting over her dress - _black still, why is she always wearing black? Curse Renly Baratheon, and Gods bless him for dying_ \- before he settled his eyes on her. Was this the call of the Wolfsblood, that which Willas had spoken of the night before, that stirring in his heart that called for passion and possessiveness? He cared not. Whatever the feeling was he would act on it. He stopped before Margaery and took her by the hand, as if to kiss it. And then by that hand he pulled her into his arms.

"Settle, Loras" Robb heard Willas, from a world and a half away, tell Margaery's wardens to stand down and take their hands off their swords. He did not care about any of them right then, not as he kissed his Flower, as he could tell that Mother was smiling at his back, thinking of olden simpler days when she too had been young and in love. As Margaery laid her hands on his upper arms and parted her lips from his he couldn't help but smile at her, even as Smalljon and Owen made sure to step between the two of them and Loras and Brienne, pointed gazes all around.

"So" she wondered quietly, reaching for his fingers, and he let her have his hand, a hand that she laid against her cheek and then leaned into, her eyes never leaving his. "How did it go?"

"My assembly of Lords have forced me to break my betrothal to Roslin Frey" he answered, grinning like a young boy who had just gotten away blameless with stealing all of his sister's sweets. Which had actually only ever happened once. And Sansa had been getting fat. Thinking of Sansa saddened him, but he took his Flower's other hand and brought it to his lips. "And though the Lords bickered fiercely, the voting was made. A slim majority in your favour, my Lady – you must have won the hearts of many of them". Most of them had liked her well enough, he supposed, but it had taken some convincing and quite a few concessions from his side. _A King rules by the grace of his subjects_.

"My charm is irresistible" she jested and made to stand on her tip-toes so that she could kiss him again, but a clearing of a throat made her look to the side and behold the state of her kin and her wardens. She blushed as she sank back down and withdrew from him, and inwardly he cursed the rules of properness and behaviour. "So, what are-" she stopped still as he sank down on one knee in front of her. "What are you doing?!" she hissed.

"Um, what does it look like?" he wondered back at her. "I mean, I thought I made it clear that-"

"Not now! Stand up!" she urged him and pulled him back to his feet, seeing on his face a frown of quite frankly epic proportions. "We cannot just kiss and then run off into the woods together, or whatever it is you Northerners do. I will not accept anything less than a state affair". She looked around pointedly, and he wondered how she had learned that demeanour, that kind but firm stare that seemed to make almost anyone want to obey her. A queenly gaze. _From Renly, no doubt_. He held back from grounding his teeth at the thought. "Robb" she wondered at him as the gardens all but vacated but for them, a solitary Brienne standing out of earshot. "Is something wrong?"

"Nothing" he assured her. _Though there is something wrong, isn't there? She always going to have been someone else's before she was ever yours._ But Renly had never touched her. She had told him that, and curse him for his foolishness, he trusted her in all that she had said. Still, that bitter sensation filled him. _Is this what it is like to be jealous?_ "'A state affair'?"

"The wedding, off course" she told him as she took him by the hand and sat him down by her side on the stone seat that she had so recently vacated, holding his hands in her lap as they sat there, knees touching. She shivered. Her cloak was green and black and thin. She noticed how he looked on her shoulders. "It is… I left it in my chambers. I thought that it might give my brothers the wrong impression. Loras would get it in his head to defend my honour or something, I'm sure. He allows flirtatious behaviour well enough, maybe kissing or what-nots, but anything more than that-"

"Can't say I'm not relieved" he replied with a feigned sigh. "I've seen your brother fight. Unless I have my family sword in my hands I'd prefer not to stand toe to toe with him. Be chopped into bits, no doubt". He looked her over again as she shivered once more, and he reached to his shoulder to unclasp his own cloak and lay it over her – only to find that he still wasn't wearing one. "I'd… I'm used to the cold. I don't know if I am warmer than most people, or-" she leant in against him, and he laid his arm over her shoulders under the cloak. At her satisfied little noises, made as she snuggled into him, he smiled. "It's a lot colder than this in Winterfell".

"I will manage. You are still nice and warm, just like your cloak" she told him in what was almost a purr, and he laughed. She stayed silent for a little while, and so he sat there, listening to her breath and to the wind. It was early in the day, and the air was cold, and the closest heart tree was far, far away, but he thought he could still hear the words of the Gods on the wind. A soothing presence. The Gods were all around him. Always. "My first wedding was a rushed thing" she spoke up suddenly.

"I suppose Renly was eager to ally with the Reach and march on the capital as soon as he could" Robb mused. He himself would have been of a mind to hurry any such wedding along, but for very different and much more sordid reasons. "Back home, in times of peace – there'd be feasting to last a week, maybe two. If a Stark would be marrying, he'd invite all the North to Winterfell".

"When my great-grandfather and great-grandmother married they had a tourney to celebrate" Margaery mused. "Jousting and melees and marksmanship contests, banquets and galas and minor marriages for every day for a fortnight. I, on the other hand had one night of dining and dancing before I was off to a bed where my husband didn't as much as look at me with warmth. And then two weeks of marching to Bitterbridge". She settled up at him and looked him deep in the eyes. "I want our wedding to be grand. To announce to the world the strength of our union, and the power of our alliance. And in times of war the people will want distraction. But I am selfish too. I want a proper wedding this time. A real wedding. With all that such would entail".

"Then you shall have it" Robb nodded, and satisfied she nodded back at him and returned to use him as a source of warmth. "And a tourney to accompany it – if we invited all the Northern and Reach lords there we could teach them all a lot about each other. That is how bonds of friendship are forged. But, you should know – my family haven't had the best recent history with tourneys".

"You are thinking of the tourney at Harrenhal, aren't you?" she wondered, and he nodded. "Well, as long as we make sure that no Targaryen princess show up to do unwanted things I think that we will be as right as rain".

"Sometimes the wind blows so hard that the rain falls sideways" Robb scoffed, and she looked at him. "What? The rains don't do that here in the South? Well, I guess that it's more common in the Rills, but-"

"You know, you really make it sound horribly wet and cold up there" she noted with a pout. "And here I thought that you were going to persuade me to come live with you and be your love and prove all the pleasures of the world at Winterfell".

"Without the rain a man doesn't appreciate the roof over his head" he told her, thinking back to how Father had used to say just that. "And without the cold he can't feel the fire in his heart". She seemed to be familiar with the saying, though. Someone else must have said it to her before. "Well then, you want a grand wedding. Finery and flowers and tables breaking under the burden of food. Wine flowing like rivers. And all of our bannermen and sworn lords attending. You call them vassals?"

"Yes, vassals". She must have noted the tone of his voice and the edge to his words, and she swatted idly at his chest, her hand lingering there to trace the ridges of his muscles. "It will take time, to summon all of your guests to Highgarden. I think that if my father hosted the festivities it would be better for everyone". She sat up and away from him before she leant up to kiss him again, and this time he replied with all the passion in his heart, startling her. "I-" she gasped as his arms went around her and his fingers ran down her spine through her dress's fabric. "It will be best to wait. I'm supposed to be in mourning, and… and-"

"And if we wait a longer while, there won't be any suspicions of paternity" he leaned away from her, to which she nodded, cheeks aflush with red and eyes wide in meeting his. "I see the wisdom in it. I may not like it, but patience is something I have been trying hard to learn". It would have been prudent to bind House Tyrell to their alliance shortly, making sure that they honoured their vows, but custom had to be observed and ritual adhered to. "We should negotiate a betrothal".

"My father would want to be there" Margaery told him, leaning in to kiss him once again. She seemed to like doing that, he noted in the back of his mind, but he wasn't one to deny her, and she came away from him with a smile, her lips swelling a little as if stung by a bee's barb. "And my Grandmother. Maybe my brother Garlan too. It's… the two being betrothed shouldn't be the ones to negotiate, should they?"

"We should leave it to our kin. Such is the custom in the North, too. And I would want my mother – and brother – there". It was better that way. If the two of them set their minds to dealing with the betrothal things would no doubt escalate to nothing but kissing and cooing within mere moments. "My bannermen are penning a letter to Walder Frey as we speak. I should write to my brother Bran".

"And I to my Grandmother" she agreed. None of them rose, their hands still clasped together where they sat. At the look she gave him Robb started chuckling, which made her laugh in turn. "Would you accompany me to the rookery, your Grace?"

"Gladly" he answered as he stood and linked her arm in his, and together they left the gardens, Brienne of Tarth and Grey Wind the direwolf following shortly after them.

And there was a warm scent on the wind. A scent of summer. A return of spring.

A lie. Winter had only just begun.

* * *

 _To Lord Walder Frey of the Twins_

 _Penned by Lord Roose Bolton of the Dreadfort_

 _Under the dawn after the full moon of the ninth month of the two-hundredth and ninety-ninth year since Aegon's Crowning and Conquest, in the eyes of the Gods of the Deep Forests, the Northern Lords convened at Pinkmaiden Castle in the Riverlands._

 _While there it was decided that our King Robbard's engagement of marriage to your daughter Roslin Frey is not in the best interest of the North. We believe that the ancestors would look down on this union. We believe that the honour of your House does not match the honour of House Stark, of Brandon the Builder's get. We believe that the Gods would disprove._

 _We have therefore resolved to break this union, in the eyes of Gods and Men. Our King shall no longer be bound by oath to fulfil this obligation of marriage and to wed your daughter. We absolve our Lord King of any dishonour inherent in this action, as this was the decision of our gathered council and not of his will._

 _We will expect your ongoing service in the cause of freedom and independence for the Trident and the North. Any withdrawal of support from his Grace's efforts at war that should follow this declaration shall be regarded as high treason, oathbreaking, and desertion of the highest order._

 _It will be met as such actions deserve to be met._

 _So hath the North spoken._

 _Undersigned_

 _Lords Rickard Karstark of Karhold, Galbart Glover of Deepwood Motte, Robin Flint of Widow's Watch & Flint's Finger, Roose Bolton of the Dreadfort, Ser Helman Tallhart of Torrhen Square, Brandard Slate of Blackpool_

 _Ladies Maege Mormont of Bear Island, Lara Branch of Briardown, Kiere Marsh of Anurwent_

 _Lord Heirs Jon Umber of Last Hearth, Wendel Manderly of White Harbour, Ser Donnel Locke of Oldcastle, Torrhen Whitehill of High Point, Ronnel Stout of Goldengrass, Ser Kyle Condon of Spear Roost, Roger Ryswell of Snowbourne, Brandon Norrey of Norrey Hall_

 _Chiefs Durmand Flint of Breakstone Hill, Gregor Forrester of Ironrath, Bran Burley of Burley Hall, Bowen Bole of Skull Hollow, Darren Woods of Lystner Hill, Jackel Fenn of the Blacklilly Pond holdfast, Kase Brineborn of Outrider Keep_

 _Champions Bloodaxe Bryke of Skagos, First Berserker; Benjicot Branch of Briardown, Grandmaster of the Hunters Guild; Lyam Bole of Skull Hollow, First Marksman; Dacey Mormont of Bear Island, the Bearfang;_

 _Further Undersigned_

 _His Grace Robbard Stark, the first of his name,_

 _The King of Winter and of the Trident, Lord of Winterfell, High King of the First Men, the Sword of the North, Vanquisher of Lions, Unmaker of Armies and Mountains_

 _The King in the North_

* * *

 ** _Jon_**

They came onto the banks of the Trident just north of the Towers to find the gates of House Frey barred to them.

Only when they had ridden a mile and a half farther south did they find out why. Jon was getting tired of hearing Greatjon Umber complain and curse about, well, everything really. But mostly the Lannisters.

"Fuck the Lannisters!" Greatjon exclaimed as they rode south along the riverside, grumbling and grunting atop his horse, a massive destrier with a brindled coat and only on whole ear that Jon pitted with all his heart. The horse must have been struck deaf ages ago, given the Greatjon's propensity towards shouting. "Fuck 'em! That Thorne man, that refused to let you through the gates and had you climb the Wall like a fucking Wildling, he was a Lannister man, you mark my words! And now these fucking Freys! The fucking gall, to disobey their rightful king and lord!"

"Peace, Lord Umber" Jon urged from where he was riding beside him. "They keep the bridge. It's their right to deny passage as they will, King's subjects or not". And if the Freys truly were Lannister men now, barring all who carried the Direwolf banner from crossing the Trident over their bridge, then they were now in Lannister lands. And the woods thickened up ahead down the road. Thick woods and trees close together could hide many men with bows and arrows. "We should strike the banners and hide our shields" Jon warned.

"I agree with the White Wolf, my Lord Umber" Hoster Blackwood spoke up from behind them, and the small following of men that had accompanied Lord Umber down south from Winterfell, those a dozen-and-a-half men who had not remained in the garrison of Wintertown, mumbled in agreement. They had come across several bands of marauding Ironborn on their ride back to Riverrun and Jon had proven himself an apt fighter and skilled leader against them. They no longer called him "Lord Snow".

They called him Jon Stark, the White Wolf. One of them, a man called Bendar who had been a tailor and leatherworker in Barrowton before the war, had even made for him a banner out of his old Night's Watch cloaks. All black, with a running white wolf across the centre. Jon wondered what Lady Catelyn would say when she saw it.

"Aye" Greatjon slouched his shoulders and glowered at the empty air before him. "We'll strike the banners, and creep along like thieves in the fucking night". Better that than dead, Jon reflected as they dismounted and rolled up their banners and covered their Wolfshead shields with their cloaks. They still wore northern armours, the Umber men in their studded gambesons and dark leathers and the three Blackwood guards of Hoster's in their red and black tabards laid over armour of overlapping scales of hardened black and white wood. Anyone could see that when looking at them, though Jon still wore his Night's Watch leathers and mail. Suddenly his horse whinnied in fear, and Jon felt more than he heard or saw Ghost's approach.

"Wait" Jon said to them all, and at his tone they looked to him in confusion before they beheld the state of his Direwolf. Ghost was more red than white, a long and bloody scratch beneath the fur of his hindquarters, but the blood dripping from his snowy coat was not his own. "Come" Jon urged, and the beast panted as it approached him to allow him to be stroked over the head and behind the ears. Jon smelled at the blood that came away to cling at his fingers, and somehow he knew. "Man's blood. Someone told to kill wolves. A scout with a bow and a long knife and no armour".

"Fucking sorcery" Greatjon cursed but still reached for his great axe. At the wall and farther south, traveling with the former bastard of Winterfell, he had seen many things he had thought impossible. Even dead who walked like men. "Ambush, Stark?"

"Aye" Jon showed his teeth and pulled Longclaw from his side with gloved hands. Even though he hadn't worn a coat or cloak since they had ridden past Moat Cailin he always wore his black gloves. "You were right, Lord Umber. These are Lannister lands now". And hardly had he said that before the arrows filled the air.

The fight was brief, bloody and cruel. Afterwards they counted their losses. Five men, two dead and three wounded beyond help, to a dozen peasant and conscript troops with almost no armour and little weapons, most of poor quality. Half of the attackers: the rest had fled when Blackwood took their leader's head and twirled it by the dirty brown locks above his head, roaring laughter like a madman. The young Riverlander had proven to be as bloodthirsty a berserker as any Umber man under the tutelage of the Greatjon. All of the members of Greatjon's band were experienced fighters, who had lifted their shields and turned to battle without hesitation, and the attackers had fought without discipline or order or even skill. Jon thought it nothing but a waste – that hadn't stopped him from downing two men himself.

With the tip of his now muddied riding boot Jon turned over one of the corpses he had been standing over. A thin, rake-like young man, with weasel-like features and a leather doublet stitched finely with two grey rectangles joined by a stylised arch. "A Frey man. Honoured footman by the look of him. Or a bastard".

"The whoring Walder is supposed to have hundreds of them" Blackwood shuddered, pale and terrified of himself and his rage after the Berserker state had left him, as he turned over another dead man, green in the face still with the rising bile. "This one's got the same doublet. No mere bandits, these. Or sellswords. These are livery. Men-at-arms".

"That Frey fuck!" Greatjon roared aloud and kicked a dead man so hard over the head that his neck snapped with a sickening crunch of a sound. "Traitor! Oathbreaker! I'll cut off his fucking balls and feed them to him!" He growled and gripped his arm, where a arrow had struck him in the shoulder and almost pierced his armour. "Should have used crossbows. Puny shite like this isn't enough to stop an Umber fighting for House Stark! The King in the North!"

"The King in the North" the survivors echoed, but Jon said the words quietly, darkly staring down at the man beneath him. He pushed Longclaw's gory tip through the man's neck and wrenched it around, severing the corpse's head from torso. Wights didn't rise if the heads were cut off, though cutting off the head didn't stop a dead man already risen. He knew that Wights would not rise this far south, in the lands of Summer. Not yet, not until the Others came in the white frost. But that was another war, a war that was to come soon but still some ways afar. And there were more pressing matters to tend to for his family.

"Frey will claim the doublets stolen and these men mere robbers and bandits. He will not risk his head by saying otherwise" Jon told all of his travelling companions, and their cheer fell silent. "The southern crossing will be closed to us too. That's why they waited to ambush us when we were farther down the road. Otherwise they'd fill us with arrows at the crossing and throw our bodies into the river, having no other option. We need to find a ship" he went on as he jerked up a dead man's cloak and wiped Longclaw clean on it. "Commandeer one if need be. We can row it down the river and then to wherever Robb's encamped".

"Aye, Lord Stark" Greatjon nodded, and there wasn't a trace of jest or false flattery in his voice. "As you order, we act". Jon looked past the dead and the men and horses, and the living ones too, staring out over the Trident's waters. What the name of all the Gods had Robb done to cause this treachery? He was a lone wolf, trapped in the south, and all the lions were closing in on him.

 _Hold out, Robb_ , Jon prayed silently. _Just a little longer. Help is on the way, and Winter is Coming_.

* * *

 _Dearest Lady Grandmother_

 _I am successful. The wolf no longer drinks at the towers. He is mine now._

 _Informally so, of course. We have yet to make arrangements of the formal kind. He has consented to such. Of course his family would be present, as would be mine. But he cannot travel too far, as he has battles to fight._

 _Perhaps in Goldengrove?_

 _He has given me a cloak, of white and grey. It is the warmest thing I have ever worn. I bring it to my bed at night and think of him. Perhaps living in the frozen North would not be so bad._

 _I await your reply eagerly._

 _With love and affection,_

 _Lady Margaery Tyrell, the Rose of Highgarden_

* * *

 ** _The Double Rose_**

"What does Margaery say, Lady Grandmother?" Garlan asked, sitting straight in his chair with a mug of water in his hand. "Is she well?"

He detested the aftertaste of wine, bitter and sour, just like ale, just like all other spirits. Water was the choice of a man who kept his body pure of poisons, honed and ready like a blade perfectly forged. A true knight did not concern himself with drinking or with fine foods. He cared not for glory. He served only, for justice and honour and for the defending of the weak and his family. And Garland had to admit, he was fearing for his family.

Lady Olenna scoffed and rolled the message back up, a ghost of a smile on her face before she handed the small scroll on to Garlan while all the other ladies of the court milled about some distance from her pavilion, the sun of Highgarden beaming down on them from overhead and making the floral patterns in the top of the pavilion dance over their feet, Garlan in the only chair beside Grandmother's in his modest finery. He preferred simple clothing. Gaudiness spoke only of a vain and weakened heart, unfit for true courage and powerful emotion. "She says she has succeeded. Partially. I think she is rather sweet on the boy. She takes his cloak with her to bed every night".

"Are you saying that she has bedded him?" It seemed unlike Margaery – but then again, he still thought of her as the young girl that had wept the first time Lady Olenna had told her that she was a pawn in the Great Game, same as all the rest of them. He still thought of her as the little girl, not as the young woman taught by Maesters and trained by Lady Olenna herself to be the perfect tool of seduction and deceit. He knew what his sister was, what Lady Olenna had made her into, though he had for the longest time refused to see it. He knew that Margaery was a kind girl. A maiden, too. He would have killed any man who laid his hands on her dishonourably.

"She has not" Grandmother replied and shook her head. "Which is why she brings his cloak to bed with her, not he himself. Read between the lines, you sword-battering brute. It would be better for us all if she fell into his bed, though. An honourable man never feels as obligated towards you as after he has put his seed inside of you".

"Do not speak of her that way, Grandmother". She looked to him, arching one hair-thin eyebrow high. "I will not have it". There were only a few people alive in the world who dared to openly defy the Queen of Thorns, and he was clearly a member of that slim minority. She stared at him for the longest time before she gave him a toothless smirk.

"This is why I like you, Garlan. Unlike your father and younger brother there is something in your head, and unlike your older brother you have a spine. You are not shy about using the sword. You always speak your mind. You have compunctions about this whole matter". She leant in towards him and put her chin to her hand, a pensive cast to her face. "Speak them".

"Stark is a heathen". She scoffed and waved at that, shifting away from him. "I know it matters little to you. It matters nothing to me, Grandmother. As long as he is kind to her, as long as she is fond of him, I would approve of any man my sister choses. Stableboy or emperor alike, from Yi Ti to Lonely Light, they could worship the Black Goat for all I care. But my paternal grandfather will not be so accepting. Leyton Hightower is a very pious man. A very pious and powerful man".

"Oh, I doubt it nothing, Garlan" she noted and leant back in her chair as he read the message from Margaery. "Leyton Hightower, Tanton Fossoway, Gareth Dunn, Lorent Caswell – Randyll Tarly wants nothing but to fight, so he might go either way. The same I can say for Titus Peake. But if we are not careful and swift in these days ahead we will have trouble in the Reach. I think we will both bless and curse Robb Stark's name before Winter has turned to spring. But I doubt that were will an actual war within the Reach".

"It will not be so clearly cut, Grandmother" Garlan rolled the message back up and handed it back to Lady Olenna, who took it and laid it together with the separate letters from Loras and Willas that had arrived earlier in the day. "If worst comes to worst, we will not know the names of our enemies. We will know them as friends". But she did not heed him in that. Just like how Father had been all but frothing at the mouth to go see the Young Wolf and would set off for Goldengrove at dawn the following day, just like how Willas ignored his warnings, just like how Margaery charged in so recklessly. "I will take my leave, Grandmother" he stood from his chair and bowed at her.

"Take care, Garlan" she warned him, and as he walked away in silence he nodded to himself. These were dangerous times. A man had to take care that he did not lose his head.

As he went and walked in silence, distanced himself from all as he made his way down the steps of the Queen's Lookout, as the marble platform overlooking the river Mander in the shadow outside of the walls of the inner citadel had been come to be known, he sighed inwardly. Somehow he felt as if the world was about to come crashing down upon his head, upon all of their heads, and he was the only one that was able to see it. He hated this feeling of encroaching doom.

Cold times were coming. Winter days, when brother would fight brother. The war was, without a doubt, coming to Highgarden and the Reach. And he, unlike many of his countrymen, had no illusions about their chances in a true war. The quantity of soldiers mattered far less than their quality, and while Randyll Tarly and he himself were their two most skilled commanders the ones they would be fighting would have dozens of them.

They might dismiss it, but he had a sense of what would happen when this alliance with Northern heathens would be made public. Some Houses, like Fossoway, would never stand for such a thing. And his wife was a Fossoway by birth. _Sweet Leonette_.

He had met her during a ball a few years earlier, on the eve of the day that Loras had been knighted after a pompous show of a tourney. She had wondered why he had been standing to the side of the festivities all the while, not partaking in any of the dancing or the singing, and when she had sipped from his cup she had been amazed to find it filled with nothing but water. He told her that he only toasted in wine, and even then only in a manner most perfunctory. He told her that he disliked the noise and rowdiness of drunken celebration, yet somehow she managed to get him to dance with her. One dance only, she had promised, yet somehow they danced all throughout the night.

They had gotten married two months later. A quiet little ceremony in the Highgarden sept, with their closest family in attendance. Later that night they had lain together for the first time. She had been his first. He hadn't been hers, though, but he did not fault her for that. _Let he who is without fault cast blame_. He cared for her a great deal. And it was not as if Father would have disproved of the match even if he had only married the Fossoway woman out of political manoeuvring. They were a rich family, the Fossoways of Cider Hall, grown wealthy off of the liquor and produce trade with the rest of the Seven Kingdoms and the Free Cities.

Some of her family had gone to Stannis along with the Florents and the Meadows, and an act of defiance in civil strife would be unacceptable to his father. If the Fossoways revolted, which he had little doubt that they would, the male line of their family would be put to the sword.

And Garlan was obedient. _I will kill Leonette's father and brothers without hesitation if asked to do so_. He would, no doubt about it. He would not like doing it, but he would do it just the same.

There was nothing that he would not do for his family.

* * *

 _To Lord Frey_

 _The pup has broken with you, and caused you dishonour._

 _Do not think about that. I was asked to pen the letter because I have the closest ties to your family, but I took no joy in it. And neither should you. Muster your emotions. Do not defy the King. Not openly._

 _I spoke against the union, but I was voted down. The Tyrell whore has sunk her thorns deep into the North. She claims herself virginal still. Though I doubt it nothing that she parts her petals for any man who can deliver her an advantage. Such is the nature of Southron women._

 _You would like her, Frey. Then again, you are ruled by your cock. Which is why you should keep your head down and yourself to your station if you want to keep it._

 _A Tyrell and Stark alliance has shifted the balance out of our favour. A King in the North with the backing of the two most fertile lands in the South is hard fought. I will not fight them. Not even in secrecy._

 _Tell Lord Tywin that I have no longer any interest in doing his killing for him. Tell him that his days are numbered. And then break with the Lannisters yourself, if you are wise. If you are wise you will keep your head. Keep your lands. And keep your cock._

 _If you must act against the pup, do so in secret, and do not openly defy him. Oppose him, and you oppose all the Northern lords. Even me._

 _A new sun rises on the North, and the Lions are as good as dead._

 _Give my love to Walda._

 _Roose Bolton, Lord of the Dreadfort_

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

Their departure from Pinkmaiden was delayed until Robb's army was set to march. Bad weather was blamed, as were hard winds and delayed messages, but everyone knew that those were the reasons she gave, not the reason she stayed.

Arrangements were made. Margaery and her following, which would include Lady Catelyn, would travel south to Goldengrove while Robb marched east with his army to smash Tywin Lannister's forces out of Harrenhal. There he would join up with the other contingents of his army and then head back west and go even further, towards Wayfarer's Rest and then on to the Golden Tooth, to begin the invasion of the Westerlands. When he had made sure that his forces had free reign in Lannister lands he and his personal guard would ride south to Golden Grove – hopefully after or at the same time as Father and Garlan arrived there. Together they would set the terms of her marriage and her betrothal.

She only hoped that things would go well. She knew very well that her father was not the easiest of men to deal with, but surely Robb had dealt with worse. But she was more worried about Robb's following on the day that they finally left the castle, as her following had mounted their horses in the courtyard of Pinkmaiden opposite Robb's personal levy and honour guard, the rest of his vast and savage army gathered outside the castle walls.

"Ebbert is a good man" Willas told him where he stood by her side, watching Robb say farewell to his mother further up the line of their horses and riders, the Master in question himself mounted along with most of Robb's honour guard and riders who were to set out shortly. Galbart Glover had already marched off with the vanguard, almost half a day earlier, heading for Harrenhal with nearly four thousand men at his back. Robb would follow with the main force, his new Maester at his side. "He is a loyal man" Willas added, leaning in to whisper in her ear. "A Tyrell man. He is Northern himself, but I have assured his loyalty for the rest of his mortal life. Allies or not, we need good listeners and informers within the Northern ranks".

"I see". She nodded back at her brother, acknowledging her consent. She did not like it, but Willas took whatever precautions he and Grandmother deemed it prudent to take, for the survival of their House and the successfulness of their endeavours. Small wonder that she had an ill feeling about the Maester from the very moment that she had seen him. The instincts Grandmother had instilled, no doubt. "We should trust Robb, Willas. His family will be my family soon".

"Oh, Margy, I'm all for that" he assured her. "The man seems earnest enough, and you clearly think the world of him. But I must think of the good of the Reach and its people. And so do you. Cleave to your lover however much you wish, Margy – but never forget which family it was that birthed you. Besides" he went on as Robb and his mother separated, the Young Wolf turning at last for Margaery "it will not just be him that Ebbert will be spying on".

As Robb approached Willas began to limp away, two of his personal servants standing by his horse while the third held the reins to help him mount. Willas was a kind man. She knew that. But one day he would rule Highgarden, and with their father growing older and none the wiser she knew that that day was approaching fast. She cast those thoughts from her head as Robb stood before her in all his armour, battered and battle-scarred, and on a whim she folded out the cloak in her hands and swept it about its rightful place on his shoulders, fastening it with a steel Wolfshead pin.

"I can't be wearing this in Highgarden before the wedding" she muttered to him and the slightly crestfallen expression on his face. "And you will be needing it. It is cold in the field, even for someone as impervious to the cold as you. Think of me when you are wearing it, will you? And bring it back to me". She fastened it and took his gauntleted hands. "Promise me. It's mine. I want it back. I want you back, safe, and whole".

"These are merciless times, my Lady" Robb told her, standing so close to her that their cloaks were all but covering each other. "Winter times. My family knows winter better than any other. I will worry for _your_ safety". A thought seemed to cross his mind, and so he reached down to his britches purposefully. One part of her mind marvelled and blushed all over at the direction the rest of her mind went to. Still, she was a little disappointed when he removed his baldric and scabbard and held his actual steel sword before her, making her closer her fingers around the sheath. "Since you can't keep my cloak" he smiled "this'll have to be my token of affection. Wear it at all times. No one's going to look twice on that in times like these".

"It's no crown of roses or a gown in your colours, your Grace" she noted, thinking that he meant well above all else but that his gift was useless to her. "Robb, I've never been taught to use the sword. I do not know the first thing about fighting with the blade-"

"Stick'em with the pointy end" he grinned, and she stared at him in silence before she fell haplessly into giggles. "Rodrik Cassel used to say that all the time when me and Jon were first learning how to knock each other about" he chuckled and pushed the scabbard firmly in her direction. "Your brothers are the best fighters in Westeros. Don't let Smalljon tell you differently. Have them show you a thing or two. Please. I would sleep better if I knew that you were safe".

"Says the young king off to fight a war" she scoffed and hefted that scabbard. "It's… its light. I thought that all the warrior maidens in the songs carried small and slender sword, but this is just a common longsword. It is still very light".

"Well-made swords aren't supposed to be heavy – unless you have been swinging them around for an hour already". She turned the scabbard around in her hands, looking closely at the handle and the guard. The crossguard was made out of black steel that curved gently forwards, out of rough iron and seemingly impure, wolves leaping along the sides of it hammered into the metal. The handle was weirwood white, shot through with red, gnarled and knobbly so that it lay better in the hand. And the pommel, as well as the rain guard, were bronze, no jewels or ornaments or precious metals, the pommel itself a thick small disk with a leaping wolf defined into either side of it. "My smiths made some shapes for my new mint. It was a shame to let it go to waste".

"They've got little crowns on their heads" she noted absently, looking up to see that his smile had become a little self-deprecating. "I think it is adorable. Very regal. Are you going to add a crown onto the Direwolf of your House banner now that the Starks are kings again?"

"Maybe to my personal crest, but not to the family banner. Bran and Rickon might grow up with the wrong ideas if so" he grinned, and for a moment he looked so… so boyish and carefree. It warmed her heart, and so she stood onto her feet and kissed him on the lips, in front of all of his men and her escort. As she tasted him on her lips – tasting of his breakfast, simple robust foods with earthy flavours, yet also of him, somehow both cold and sweet – she heard someone holler and hoot, and a cheer rose around them, mostly from the Young Wolf's bodyguards. She did not care. She could feel the hairs of his beard against her cheeks, soft and prodding, and she liked it very much. He was, quite frankly, irresponsibly good at kissing.

"Thank you" she told him as they parted when she sank back down on her heels. "You are certain that you will be hale and whole without it?"

"Aye" he nodded. She liked the way he said it. It was as if his voice made her melt. His accent was almost sinful, given how delightful as it was. "Maybe I'll start using a greatsword in battle. Not much use from horseback, though. And two swords look… gauche". She laughed at that. "What? You think I haven't learned any of your fancy Southron words, what with being around your lovely self and all?"

"Oh, aye" she replied, trying to mimic his Northern drawl as much as she possibly could, and he laughed aloud. By his help she fastened the belt around her waist and made sure that the hilt of her new sword hung by her left hip, and afterwards she took his hands. "I do not want you to go" she confessed, linking her fingers with his. "I do not want you to get hurt, or worse. And… I will miss you".

"Dry your eyes, love – we'll see each other again soon enough" he laid his gauntleted hand by her cheek and gave her one last fleeting kiss. "Now, on your horse" he jerked his head towards Rosa "before your brother tries to lop my head off. I'm honest. Not a word is lie. He's giving me a dark and bloody look. Probably doesn't like all the liberties I am taking with you".

"He can't say anything about it. He is a knight, and you are a king, my wolf". She did let him help her onto her horse, though. He lifted her into the saddle like she weighed as little as air. "Goodbye, Robb" she bid him well with a strange hitch in her voice as the other riders in her fellowship began to urge their horses forwards alongside her.

"Fare thee well, Margaery" he answered with a bending of her neck, and stood still there as they rode out through the rebuilt gates of Pinkmaiden castle beneath the streaming banners of her house and her family and the Tully trout, past ranks and ranks and ranks of the Northern army formed up and ready for the march. Some, who had heard of her and Robb, cheered as she went past, and there were shouts at times of actual words that she could make out.

"Margaery!" some cheered. "Margaery Tyrell!" And some, the ones she liked the best, shouted "The wolf and the rose!" after her. Despite the heavy feeling in her breast she smiled.

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** I'm just sayin': no people, nowhere, are immune to politics. It just takes different shapes depending on the people and the region. Just ask Iceland.

This chapter is a day late, too, just like the last one. I'm sorry about that. Being sick worsens and slows my output, apparently.

Don't be too bothered by the premise of this chapter, will you? It's a situation taking right out of Swedish and Scandinavian history, a situation replicated often in the Muscovite council of princes. A simple change in reputation can be devastating to someone in a position of great power, especially during the pre-modern era. And also, I had a list laying around with the names of every single Northern lord that followed Robb into the field. It was a shame not to use it. There is a Lord of the Rings reference in that signature block. See if you can spot it.

Also, Roose Bolton lies. Like, a lot.

I hope you have enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	9. Brave Companions

Chapter Nine – Brave Companions

* * *

 ** _Jon_**

Jon discovered, on that trip down the Trident with Smalljon and the surviving Northern fighters in their escort and the sailors they had hired into their cause, that he did not like ships.

No. He did not like ships, and he did not like sailing. Not one bit.

The sickness abated after a day or two, but still the rocking of the Fat Sow as she rolled over the waves of the Trident's stream made his stomach heave and his balance fail. He clung to the railings of the ship in the days and the night, as being inside the cabins only worsened things for him, and he even slept before the mast with the sailors. The cold winds and the shivering chill of the splashing water at the bow of even a slow and lumbering ship like the Fat Sow eased the sickness, at least. But while there Ghost seemed to mock him, as the Direwolf had no troubles at all with retaining his food on the ship. He didn't even protest. He was loitered around at the rear of the poop deck and the helm, frightening the sailors out of their minds by his very presence.

"Oh, it'll pass, lad" Greatjon had said on the second day of their travels, hand on his shoulder as he was violently sick over the side of the ship as they lazily sailed down the Trident. "I remember the first time my father took me out onto the Shivering Sea. It was a storm, a thousand times worse than this. But it passes for all men. After a fortnight heaving my guts out all over the deck of my father's best ship-"

"Your family's got ships?" Jon had managed to ask between his struggling for breaths and calm in between his agonising struggling with his own stomach, glancing at the Umber Lord with some surprise.

"Of course we bloody well got ships, Lord Stark" Greatjon had grinned. "Half the shoreline of the bay of seals is ours. In ages past the chiefs of Skagos were only allowed to trade with the mainland through Umber ports. We're an old house and a complex people, Jon. Everyone is, even in the North".

Jon understood that. He liked the sentiment, though he knew it to be false.

Some men, he had found, were very, very simple. He had fought beside some men like that, trained and eaten with them and called men like that "brother". Some of them thought nothing of the vows they had sworn, the words they had said in the eyes of the gods. But Jon thought of them always, and he wasn't even bound by them anymore. _I am the sword in the darkness. I am the shield that guards the realms of men_. He found that he could not stop keeping to them, simply because he had been commanded to. Those words… they meant something to him. And his dishonour in breaking them haunted him. Was he forever supposed to be without honour and without any credence to his name? He had thought that when he had fought the Ironborn, but he was no longer so sure of it.

Some parts of the Oath he could break. Perhaps that was the solution. After all, he had sworn so many things, but to be some of the things he had sworn to be he now had to have lands and take a wife and father children. Perhaps he could still be a man of the Night's Watch. At least in part.

At least in part.

The ship they had managed to conscript in one of the villages in the Freylands, with a little help from a pouch full of silver gotten from the selling of their horses, was called the Fat Sow, and never had Jon heard a more apt name for anything be uttered. It was a wide thing, more barge than boat, sitting low in the water despite a second deck for oars beneath the sundeck and two masts catching the wind for it. The sailors were communicable enough, the captain especially so. Not that Jon had any wish for talking as they travelled sluggishly down the Trident, the days passing by in a pace that he could only describe as painfully slow. The plan was to stop for news and supplies in Harroway – the more colloquial name for Lord Harroway's Town.

But plans, as always, rarely come to fruition.

Fires burned in Lord Harroway's Town. They saw it from the distance, the banks of the Trident swelled with the rains and with the seasons to bring them deep into the harbour even at low tide, and while the captain of the Fat Sow wanted them not to approach the town, begged them not to involve him or his crew in any fighting, Jon and Greatjon refused him. Even Hos seemed eager to fight. Though Hos was always eager to fight now. Jon wondered if Greatjon's training had ruined his gentle spirit and broken something in his head.

And when the winds brought them close the sights they saw made all of them want to fight that much more.

The local garrison of House Roote, their banner of waves of green with a double headed horse of brown as its sigil, along with bannerless men in ragtag armour and motley leathers with ramshackle weaponry were fighting in the streets, their enemies murderers and marauders of uniformless look and with white banners flying over their heads bearing the simple sign of a black goat with bloody horns. Shoulder to shoulder with them, fighting desperately up the road towards the small piers where half a dozen other ships lay anchored. There they were pushed, pressed as one being into a slaughter as knights came thundering down the slopes beyond the town, from out of the woods and down the roads. Riverland knights, in shimmering and matt scales covering both themselves and their horses, swords and lances lowered fiercely, riding under scores of different banners, all crowned and overwatched by a single, and ancient, coat of arms. It was familiar to Jon as the sight of his own palms: grey on white, a Direwolf.

"Stark!" Greatjon shouted and hefted his axe up on his shoulders. "That's the Old Wolf banner! Stark of Winterfell!" His massive arm went around Jon's shoulder even as the sailors, with much protest, were made to take the ship in to port under Hos's direction. "Hah! I never thought that we'd stumble over the Northern army like this!" And as they approached the pier a wind picked up behind them, tearing at their clothes and whirling about their bodies, ripping at the furled sails above their heads. "You hear that, Stark?! The Gods are with us! The Gods-!"

And that was when the men on the shore noticed them.

Jon remembered later only snippets of the fight that followed, the happenings later in that day and the memories that were birthed from them overpowering those gory recollections. But he did remember cowering under Greatjon's and Hos's shield when the arrows started to fly and the unarmoured and unprotected crew of merchant sailors died around them. The old captain slumped dead to the oaken deck with a javelin through his neck, but of the rest of them they stood and held their ground on the deck, Jon handed a shield by Bendar the Leatherworker some time before the mercenaries beneath the Black Goat banner charged their ship.

Jon, Ghost, Drustan and Bendar held the foredeck, Greatjon the middle deck along with most of the men and the surviving sailors, and with two archers and only himself Hos held the aft and the poopdeck all on his own, screaming like a madman when the mercenaries charged them. They climbed the railings, jumped the deck, even swum in from around the rear of the ship's far side from port, but by Greatjon's booming voice and Jon's shouted orders they held. Jon remembered fleetingly killing what looked to be a small man in a septon's robe but with wicked knives in his hands and madness in his eyes. Another looked to be a cadaver, with red-rimmed eyes, thin hair, parchment skin and black veins that were swiftly opened with Longclaw. And so they stood, even with the planks going slick with blood beneath their feet and the bodies piling up around them, strong against the onslaught with the wind at their backs.

And then, suddenly, it was over. A few of the Lannister men tried to surrender to the knights that pushed them towards the docks, dropping their weapons and pleading for cleamency, but the Riverlanders remembered freshly how their homes and their lands and their people had been pillaged by Westerlander men and so showed no mercy in their vengeance. The slaughter sickened Jon, to his very core, but he didn't begrudge the men carrying it out. It had to be done. And he would deny no one their revenge.

Not while he was questing to avenge Father himself.

Later, as he stood talking with one of the few of the bannerless men, the Brotherhood without Banners, that had survived the battle, a tall young man with bright blue eyes and thick black hair that sat slumped against a bale of hale by the piers, he could feel something. He stopped tending to the horse that he had found wandering by the docks, a steed that must have belonged to one of the Lannister men or one of the mercenaries, a horse with a coat as black as midnight and with a temper that was as unpredictable as wildfire, and looked up.

At the sudden feeling Ghost darted up and sniffed into the air just as the same time as Jon looked around wildly. Then, as Ghost darted away, running as fast as he possibly could on his spirited white legs, he could feel it: a giddiness, a sense of belonging.

Of family.

And just then he looked to the southern hills to see the Young Wolf's honour guard come inside the reach of his sight.

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

"I mean to marry her, Smalljon" Robb grunted as he unhorsed Armstark and handed the reins of his steed to Patrek Mallister in his plate armour and indigo cloak, in the midst of an argument with the man that had become his voice. "I trust her. I am wont to have you, or anyone else, spying on her".

"Aye, she's a kind and comely lass, your Grace" Smalljon replied as he too unhorsed along with Dacey, Owen and Robar Royce as they came upon the crest overlooking Lord Harroway's Town with its singed houses and downed watchtowers, his vanguard of Riverland levies and knights clearing the bodies of the dead Lannister soldiers and mercenaries off the streets while the people of the city were returned to their homes. The Stark banner flew over the keep of the town's lords, House Roote, and the men below cheered as they saw his arrival. "She'll make a good queen. But, in all fairness, your Grace, you've known her all of two months. I'm having Bella watch over her, ever the same".

"Aye, and I'm sure your whore does splendid bloody work in clandestine matters" Robb grumbled back, debating whether or not he should force Smalljon to set aside the wench and have him marry some Southron lady. Jonos Bracken had half a dozen daughters… "Can she be trusted?"

"I trust her with my cock, so I think I can trust her to send me a message every now and then. It's the rare whore that knows how to write and read" Smalljon replied, clearly disappointed that there was no fighting to be had for the honour guard as the vanguard had done all of the work for them. "It's the Tyrell cripple I don't trust. No man who smiles that much with that hideous a deformity is untouched in the head. And, more to the point, I don't trust the rest of them. Southrons talk a good game, all honour and virtue, but shove a sword in their hand and tell them to face a strong man and most of them piss themselves. The cripple belongs out in the wilds, frozen to death. Put out to the wolves".

"Keep those thoughts to yourself, Umber" Robb shot him a glare, to which Smalljon faltered. "And never speak a word of this around Margaery. None of you will" he went on to those five of his closest guards within earshot while the rest of his immediate wardens came up the hillside, Maester Ebbert and Robb's new squires amongst them. "Raise the tents here!" he called out to them. "We're not burdening the Rootes any more than we already have. Send word that anyone in the town that had their homes burned by the Lannisters will be housed in the castle, along with the wounded. And someone get me a census of our loses, gains and kills!"

"I'll get on it, your Grace" Ser Karyl Vance, along with Marq Piper, both of them young Lords after the death and displacement, respectively, of their fathers, rose back into his saddle and wheeled around for Harroway. The other two Vances in Robb's guard, Ronnel and Hugo, were of the other branch of his family, the Vances of Atranta, and they gave Karyl long looks as he rode off. Wayfarer's Rest, Karyls holdings, were the grander one, with his branch of the family being the richer and greater one all throughout the history of their House, but now only Karyl and his three daughters remained of the Vances of Wayfarer's Rest. Robb rubbed his eyes at the thought of all the troubles he was having with dynastic disputes. It made him want to summon all his lords and give them a stern talking to.

Donella Hornwood, born Manderly, had still not answered his sent request to legitimise her late husband's bastard. Hoster Blackwood was still nowhere to be seen, and his father's burial was approaching quickly. Who was ruling that venerable House now? Little Ben Blackwood, fourteen years old? And nothing to mention the crises of succession with the Vances, Bethany Dustin having yet to name any heirs to her husband's lands, none of the Skagosi chiefs consulting him about anything, and the Freys having withdrawn to the Crossing after leaving only half their force with his army, and-

He sighed aloud and shook his head, reaching up to rub at his eyes. His crown was in his saddlebags, replaced with his helmet when he rode, but he could still feel the weight of it on his head. It was the heaviest damned thing he had ever carried, and with every mile travelled away from Pinkmaiden it only seemed heavier. Margaery made him forget his worries. He had too many bloody things to contend with while in the field, leading a war. So much of it had to be postponed, but his inaction was letting his kingdom slip into chaos. He needed someone to lean on, people to advise him on matters of peace, a council to delegate his needs to. A group loyal to-

"Your Grace?" Patrek Mallister watched him flinch and wheel around while the squires and pages raised his tent, his eyes wide and darting everywhere and every which way. "Is anything the matter?" There was a sense of giddiness in him, of great and impossible happiness mixed with bitterness and sorrow, yet there was no source of the emotions, no origin of them. Except for-

"Get me a chair" he ordered, and within moments a felt camping seat was unfurled within the raised tent, and so he sat down on it after he sent his guards away. I leaned back, made himself as comfortable as he could within his armour, before he closed his eyes and _drifted_.

Brother. That was the word, wasn't it? Word or not, Robb was happy. Happier than he had been in a long while.

His brother was back, and they danced and jumped about each other, pushing each heads into each other and sniffing each other. Brother smelled of blood, of humans, of ice and the Cold Lands, of the Others, of sorcery.

Of course, Brother's bonded human had much more Green in him than Robb's, which made things so much simpler for him. Brother was bigger too, taller than him but not as muscled or strong. He was no longer the runt of the litter, and his white fur had grown elegant and long in the moons that they had been apart.

He was whole. He was safe. And it was so very good to see him again. Together they threw their heads back and raised their muzzles towards the cold sunny sky and together they sang-

Robb's eyes shot open and he stood in the very same moment as everyone around him stopped dead and still in their motions. On the wind they heard it, from the sparse woods on the banks upstream from Harroway: the howling of a Direwolf. And the howling of another. Two of them, singing together, the sound of a primal and sorcerous time long entombed but now returning.

"Ghost" Robb grinned and stormed out of the newly erected tent to stand on the precipice of that grassy hill, the wind sweeping back his hair as he smelled the coming of snow, and from the bottom of the hill, atop a black horse with pale white eyes, came a familiar shape riding with Greatjon Umber and Hoster Blackwood in tow. "Jon".

Jon had grown a bit since they last met. He still looked as long-faced and brooding as ever, his black hair longer around his shoulders – he has never met a girl that he's liked more than his hair – yet stubble covered his cheeks and his chin and he seemed taller, even a little taller than Robb. He wore black leathers, no cloak as if the chill of the Southron winter didn't bother him in the slightest, and the sword at his side had a white pommel in the shape of a Wolfshead in stone. Longclaw. Must have been. Robb had heard of it in the message sent by Bran and Maseter Luwin from Winterfell after Jon had rescued them. And when Jon unhorsed before him with little fanfare they stood there, opposite each other, saying nothing for a little while as all others around them regarded them in silence.

"Your Grace-" Jon began awkwardly, only to be cut short in his words as Robb took a few long strides towards him and wrapped his arms around him, lifting him into the air by his waist by a bear-like embrace, Jon still as scrawny as ever compared to him. "Your Grace! You're choking me!" Jon managed to force out before Robb placed him back on the ground, and the two grinned as they took each other by the wrist, a warrior's handshake, just like they had done when they were children.

"Don't you bloody well call me that" Robb's smile faded with emotion, and he gripped his brother by the back of the hair and forcefully put their foreheads together, both their eyes closing as they stood at the top of that grassy hill. In their combined sorrow they mourned then the father that they had lost and the family that had been so harrowed and almost torn from them, of their broken and lonely brothers, of their sisters held in captivity. "Not you. Everyone else, can call me that, but you'll call me Robb. Nothing but".

"Of course… brother" Jon answered and the two parted, each still gripping the other by the wrist. Emotions passed between them, things experienced beyond words, family and innocence lost for both of them, the world changed and torn away from under them. Too much to put into words, too much at once. So instead they spoke to each other like brothers. Jon began, a small smirk on his lips. "Told you I'd be all in black when we saw each other again. I leave you alone for one bloody year, and you crown yourself king".

"It is Greatjon's fault" Robb grinned like he had used to, just like when they were mere boys back in Winterfell. "I kicked so much Lannister arse that my boots started smelling permanently of lion shit, and suddenly the Lords started having all sorts of opinions. I was lucky that Greatjon was the loudest. One poor fool wanted to crown me as emperor of the moon".

"Less bloody outlandish, that. Never imagined you to be a king – you'd probably make a mess of it" Jon shook his head at the foolishness in mock severity before a thought occurred to him. "And what is this I hear? 'Robbard'? What's that supposed to mean?"

"Aye". He let go of Jon's wrist and rubbed at the back of his head through his hair. "About that…"

"It sounds stupid" Jon went on, arching an eyebrow at him. He was scarred now, Robb noticed, scratched across the face by some unknown foe, and he had noticed the mass of scars on his hands even through his black gloves and Robb's brown ones. Burn scars. "What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking of how my children would one day learn our family tree" Robb shrugged and adopted a slightly more nasally voice, as if badly mimicking the speech of a young boy. "'So, master Maester ser, there used to be a lot of Kings of Winter. Torrhen, Benjen, Dorren, Theon, Harlon, Jon, Jorah, Rickard, Rodrik, about five hundred thousand blokes called Brandon, and then some fuck called Robb'". He cocked his head to the side and one eyebrow up. "Didn't fit".

"Your children" Jon nodded and went to stand by Robb's side as he turned to look out over the river and the six ships now gathered along the banks while the citizens of Lord Harroway's Town slowly returned to their homes under the watchful eyes of the Stark and Umber men. "I'll have children too, you know" Jon mentioned as little more than an aside. "One day. No oaths about that anymore. Children with the name Stark. Thanks for that. Never thought I would" he added in a very casual manner.

"You're welcome, brother" Robb inclined his head as they regarded the ships ahead of them. "You know, I should probably get you married off" he sighed and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Get started on those children right away. We need more Starks to ensure the bloodline trundles along".

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves" Jon made a face of pained dismay. "We can talk arranged marriages and girls when I've gotten some food in me. And wine. And sleep. Gods help me, how I hate boats".

"Seasick?". Jon nodded, to which he wondered if it really counted as seasickness if you were on a river instead of actually at sea. Well, the Trident was wide enough to be counted as a small sea in several places. If you went by really, really small seas. "Never had that problem myself. Heard it can be a right arse. You've got my sympathies".

"Thanks" Jon muttered before he frowned, neither of them looking at each other, still regarding the lazily flowing water of the river. "And when were you ever on a boat? You've never been sailing across any seas. Is it a recent thing?"

"No. Father took me touring the North a few years back, remember?" All those memories; every one of them had been happy, exited, glorious for only a short time ago, but now every single one was just as bitter as it was sweet. "We sailed from White Harbour to Karhold. I wrote to you about the day I went ashore. Alys Karstark pushed me into one of the ponds in the Karhold godswood. Cold bloody things, those. Nearly froze my bollocks off". He considered for a moment. "Alys would be a good match. Daryn Hornwood's dead, so-"

"Can't we talk about it later?" Jon wondered, to which Robb shrugged and they went back to staring blankly out over the Trident. Robb's eyes soon fell on the ship that had brought his brother south to his side, and Jon noticed. "She's called the Fat Sow. We got her in a village in Frey lands. Her captain and most of the crew died when the Bloody Mummers boarded her. I suppose she's mine now, but you can have her".

"Ugly damn thing" he noted absently, his mind labouring furiously with sudden ideas. "It's wide, stable, slow but spacious at both aft and bow. I could have a ballista or a springald mounted on either platform. Maybe have the railings raised to provide cover for crossbowmen or archers. Put platforms for marksmen in the masts. Would come in handy when besieging any castles along the waters. It would have to hug the coastline, cumbersome, but I'd say it was about time that I made myself a royal navy, wouldn't you? It has to start somewhere".

"You've got Glover and Manderly men in the rest of your army?" Robb nodded. "I'll go see them, ask their carpenters what they can do for you". He paused, a darkness shifting over him that even Robb could sense. "We were attacked just south of the Frey crossing. Bandits disguised to look like Frey men, or Frey men poorly disguised as bandits".

"Walder fucking Frey" Robb cursed quietly. "I've tried to make peace with him. I've offered him my uncle instead of me. I've offered to make concessions regarding trade, but he's yet to respond. Now I know why. Bandits, you say? He'll just say that they were highwaymen of which he knew nothing. If they are his then none of his patrols will catch them, while my own people will feel their blades all the sharper for it. But I don't have the time or the men to deal with him now. Once the Westerlands are beaten and we have peace once again… Peace. A dream of a notion, now. A word merely, without meaning".

"Once we've beaten the Westerlands, and thrown the Ironborn back into the sea" Jon added bleakly, remembering the things that he had seen beyond the Wall. The Dead that Walked, and past them, hidden in the frozen fog; the killing frost. The White Shadows. "There will be lots more wars to come. The sailors told me about Stannis Baratheon, for one. And there is something else. A man named Mance Rayder is gathering a Wildling army hundreds of thousands strong in the lands beyond the Wall. Something's driving them south. We should arm and support the Night's Watch-"

"I've got two wars to fight, three if I'm not careful, and you want to drag me into a fourth?" Robb grumbled and rubbed at his eyes. "I'll… do what I can. Most of the men still in the North are mustering to defend against the Ironborn. I just don't have the resources for this fight, Jon. I need more soldiers".

"I take it you've got a plan, brother?" Jon turned to him then, and Robb did the same towards his brother, nodding. He was just about to open his mouth and tell him about Margaery and his plans for Royce and all of the rest of it, even of the times that Grey Wind had spoken to him, when their peace was disturbed by a sudden burst of shouting.

"What'dya mean you bloody broke it?!" Greatjon roared and managed, somehow, to tower over his giant of a son, gripping his oldest son and heir by the collar of his armour as he shook him like a boy of ten. "You bloody broke it?! Wait until your mother hears about this, you mark my fucking words boy! I'll send you to the Boltons-!"

"Peace, Greatjon" Robb pushed the two apart with firm hands, unafraid even of the raging Lord of Umber. "You should be proud of him. He broke it when he captured the Mountain that Rides. That's no cause for punishment. In fact" he spoke up to the band all around them and cleared his throat. "Loras Tyrell, Robar Royce and Smalljon Umber shall all have new swords from me, gifts for saving my life that day. And Hoster Blackwood-" he turned towards the last young man, who now stood, alone and shuddering beneath the weight of the axe that Greatjon had given him, one of the Vances having delivered him the bad news. Robb bit his lip for a second. "Lord Blackwood" Hos's eyes snapped up to his, wide and frightened "your father and brothers died fighting for my cause, fighting my enemy. Ask me any boon, and you-"

"I want a weapon, same as the others" he said, the rage that Greatjon had taught him to channel creeping into his eyes and his voice, distorting his gaze and his speech to make him seem a great many years older than he really were. "And I want to drive it through Gregor Clegane's skull. I want my men to be the ones to take Clegane's Keep, the ones to kill all his family and his household. Vengeance. That's what I want, your Grace".

Robb looked at him in silence. He remembered the boy as a bookish sort, tall and wiry and lacking entirely in balance, but now he was growing muscles, growing heart, and definitely growing mercilessness. "Very well" he nodded and gestured to Maester Ebbert, who had been standing by the side of Robb's new field-bard and personal minstrel Rymund, to hurry forth and make notes of it all with quill and parchment. "You will have your revenge. House Blackwood's levies will march on Clegane's Keep once we've taken the Golden Tooth, and when the time comes for the Mountain to be executed you may swing the axe". He then turned away, signalling that the impromptu audience was at an end, and as he paced away Jon hurried to his side.

"You're actually pretty good at this king business, brother" Jon remarked, though there was no actual surprise on his voice. "Where to now?" he wondered as they mounted their horses, Jon's new steed prancing restlessly beside Armstark before they turned the horses towards Lord Harroway's Town and urged them forwards. "Speak to me, brother".

"Tytos, Brynden and Lucas died before my eyes, Jon" he answered in what was almost a snarl as he went, trotting down the hillside. "I lead my father's people in revolt against the family that he swore to obey. By my actions thousands of men die, and my dreams are filled with screams. Screams, blood, and the flashing of blades in the dark. Margaery… she makes me forget. She makes me think of the sunshine and not the rain, the future and not the past, the summer and not the Winter. Tell me, brother" he asked before they rode into Harroway proper. "Is that a good thing?"

"For you, aye" Jon replied, his face and entire countenance furrowed in concern. "Perhaps not for us, for Winter is Coming. Margaery – she the one you forsook the Freys for? The gatekeeper at the Crossing told us about that". Robb did not reply for a little while, and so Jon pushed. "Is she pretty?"

"She's beautiful, she's kind and she's mine" Robb muttered, to which Jon shrugged. He knew his brother meant nothing by it, but still he could not help but snap and be territorial like a wolf around his mate. Had that been because of the Wolfsblood that Willas had spoken about? Was there some inherent savagery inside his heart? Was he nothing but a slave to brutality and passion and vengeance, checked only notions of honour? _Forsake honour_. Gods, what he would give for one straightforward answer. "Margaery. Margaery Tyrell". _Summer-Sun_. He glanced over his shoulder to find Grey Wind and Ghost padding quietly after them behind their horses, and it was almost as if the happily panting grey Direwolf gave Robb an incredulous glance. "Grey Wind likes her".

"Well, if the Direwolf thinks that she will do". Jon's tone clearly indicated that he would have rolled his eyes had he been a person prone to rolling his eyes. "She's got brown hair, then? Slender? Big brown eyes like a doe?" Robb shot him a look. "What? We grew up together. You've always fancied women with brown hair. I've always wondered why".

"Starks are supposed to have dark hair, not red" he replied. "And what about you? All the girls you were ever sweet on – except for Alys Karstark – were red of hair. And don't you give me that look. I know how you blushed when I told you to go dance with her during father's feast. Aye, aye" he chuckled at Jon's dark look "I'll stop talking about Alys bloody Karstark".

"How is she, this Southron princess of yours? What's she like?" Jon asked as they rounded a corner in the streets and saw an open square of cobbled stone just up ahead, people lining the road to stare in silence at the two of them and their great beasts, a few of Robb's honour guard hurrying to fall in behind the Direwolves as the soldiers of Robb's vanguard cheered him on with cries of "King of the Trident!" and "King in the North!". Robb mused on that question, and when he did answer his mood was surprisingly sorrowful.

"You think that even if we all got back to Winterfell after winning the war things would be the same? That Mother and Sansa and all her ladies will still have their singing lessons in Mother's solar?" he asked Jon, more of a question for the Gods than for men and thus entirely rhetorical. "Father's dead. Mother's forlorn with grief. Bran's broken, Rickon's always angry or crying, and who knows what that inbred shite Joffery has put Arya and Sansa through. Margaery… she's a spot of light. I can't explain it. When I'm around her the day feels sunny, somehow, even if the sky is grey or we're in the dead of night. The Lannisters stole all the songs from Winterfell, Jon. Margaery might just bring them back". He shook his head and breathed out hard. "Does that make any sense?"

"Aye – what sense I make of it is that you're stupid in love" Jon gave a shadow of a smile as they approached the House Roote keep around which the town was built, its drawbridge lowered and men of the house as well as a myriad of other Riverlander Houses streaming in and out of it, many of the men the Vance grey and gold or grey and green, others in the red and blue finery of House Tully, a few Riverlander knights in their tell-tale scale mail armours that shimmered like the skins of salmons, catfishes and trout. On their way they carried weapons and shields, helping wounded or displaced citizens at the king's command, and Robb and Jon stopped before a command post to the side of the draw bridge, unhorsing to speak with the captain there.

While most of the men in the immediate vicinity either cheered, saluted or bowed in Robb's presence, those that did not stare at Grey Wind and Ghost whispering "Wasn't there supposed to be only one of them?", Jon glanced to Robb, who looked back before giving him a slight shove across one shoulders. Understanding, Jon cleared his throat and spoke to the elderly, eight-fingered knight in charge. "Report".

Robb nodded approvingly as Jon began to assume command, and he was fairly good at it. He must have been, given the reports that he had gotten from Greatjon and Maester Luwin about Jon's progress during their journey South. He was turning into a capable leader quickly enough. Good. He needed loyal men. "We've taken some of their striped horses, so we have, Lord Stark, your Grace" the knight captain went on while Robb listened on only half an ear. "Zorses, I think they're called. Most of their men died on their swords, or ours, rather than be captured. Their commander didn't, though. He hid in a pigsty, after raping and maiming his way through a tanner's family. We've got him in the cells in irons-"

"Hold" Jon asked, and the older veteran of many wars promptly shut up. "Your name, man?"

"Ser Janas Perryn, my Lord Stark" the old man replied and let one of his gauntleted hands, armour mismatched and piecemeal and his head as bald as an unpeeled egg. "Fought beside your Lord Father, so I did, at the Ruby Ford and Pyke. Since I was the only one who knew how to read amongst this lot" he jerked his only thumb at the men behind him, peasant levies with clubs and spears and a few hedge knights even more rough in appearance than him "I got them sorted out for you".

"You're a good man, Ser Janas" Jon nodded and took him by the green shoulder pauldron of his armour. "Have that man brought before me and the King, then get someone to relieve you so that you can get some rest. You've done good work for House Stark".

"King of the Trident" Janas bowed towards Robb before he left over the drawbridge, shouting orders into the keep. "Oi! Fuckwits! The king wants the Black Goat by his feet! Quick as you bloody well can, you stinking shits!"

"North or South, at the Wall or not, some people respond well to threats and degradation" Jon remarked, and Robb wondered what he must have suffered up there, on the edge of the known world. He was different, that much he could tell, by his scars and how he still wore nothing but black despite having forsaken his vows. Or had he? Robb wondered. Perhaps some parts of the oaths he had sworn were more easily broken than others. Perhaps he had done something, seen something, to be bound in loyalty to the Night's Watch in cause but not name. That was evident enough.

Jon did do his duty to him well enough, and had done so in the past, he reflected as a tall and gaunt man with a long goatee dangling from his pointed chin was dragged, kicking and cursing and begging in both the common tongue and some thick, dark, imperious tongue, was dragged before them and shoved down onto an old stool that would serve as their block. A small crowd was gathering around them, mostly soldiers but also burghers and peasantry who jeered and sneered, shouting accusations at the former leader of the mercenaries that had almost sacked their town. Foul, horrible allegations. They turned Robb's stomach just hearing them. "What's your name?" Jon asked the gaunt man.

"Vargo Hoat" the gaunt and fat-haired murderer began to babble, clearly not above begging. "The Black Goat of Qohor's on my banner, it is very much. I lead the Brave Companions, I've led them through all the reaches of the world, and I can be of service to you, your Grace, so I can be-"

"We don't need men like you" Jon all but spat at the foreigner, his words causing the soldiers around him to mutter and murmur in agreement. "Not even the Boltons would take you. I heard what you did. Sliced the nose and hands and feet of that poor tanner's girl before you raped her. You should lose your life for it. That's the only justice for men like you". He looked to Robb, and so did the rest of them. But Robb made no motion to ask for a sword or to swing the axe himself. He merely looked to his brother.

"Well, go on then" he urged Jon and shoved lightly at his shoulder. "The man that passes the sentence should swing the sword". Jon's eyes shot wide open as he looked from Robb to the monster shaped like a man. "Or you've never killed before?" Jon needed to step up to the task. Robb needed men he could trust to act on his behalf. Jon could, perhaps, be such a man.

"Of course I bloody well have" Jon answered before he rolled his shoulders and drew his sword, taking it in a doublehanded grip while the two men of Robb's own levy held Hoat down. "Vargo Hoat. You are named murderer. Reaver. Rapist. Deserter" Jon spoke up loudly as the Qohorik struggled. "I-" he furrowed his brow and looked to Robb.

"Go on". He needed to be able to do it. He needed to be able to do it, if he was to be a lord, if he was a Stark. Any man could kill another in battle, when the blood sang with terror and rage. But justice took heart and true conviction. "Say it like Father would have said it. Do it like he would've".

Jon nodded and looked back to the struggling man. "In the name of Robbard of the House Stark" he began "first of his name, King of the Trident and of Winter, High Chief of the First Men and King in the North, I" he breathed out hard and then in again, collecting himself. "I, Jon of the House Stark, Lord of the Whispering Wood, sentence you to die".

To Jon's credit he raised his blade and severed the murderous rapist's head from his neck in one fluid strike – or perhaps it was due to the Valyrian steel. Everyone nearby hollered, cheered and applauded, though perhaps it was less because of his showmanship and more because of seeing justice dealt to an evil man.

And then, from the hills outside a town, a messenger came riding. He dismounted as the body of the beheaded mercenary was dragged away to be thrown into a ditch and fed to the crows and knelt before Robb, panting and dirtied, his horse lathered and almost ridden to the death. "News from Harrenhal, your Grace" he panted out. "Tywin's left the keep with only a fraction of his men. He's headed to King's Landing". He looked up to Robb, hesitant and uncertain, but he was urged to go on. "Stannis Baratheon attacked the city, your Grace, but he was beaten back. His fleet burned. Tywin's host fought back what was left".

Silence reigned at the news, and Robb stood deep in thought. That was why the mercenaries and the Lannister men had attacked Harroway – for the ships. They were deserters all, plunderers and cowards of the watching contingent at Harrenhal that had fled when his army came approaching. There was little other reason behind their actions. But the news were distressing. If Stannis's fleet was dispersed, if his forces on land had been smashed, then he had effectively lost the war. Five Kings had been in the war – and now only three remained: a Kraken, a lion-stag abomination, and the Direwolf. And he knew which one of them he was counting on to win.

"Well" he said at last "so much for Stannis and an easy peace. At least I get to kill Joffery myself".

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

"Now, again" Lady Catelyn told Elinor as they sat in their suite in one of the three taverns their following had all but filled in the small town of Mooncross, on the edge of the Reach. "Begin from the top" she tapped the map in front of her with an earnest finger.

"From south of the Wall there is the Gift" Elinor began as Margaery and the other ladies in waiting sat around her, Margaery herself seated on her bed in the far corner with her legs drawn up under her, Lionslayer held in her arms like a young child would have held a stuffed felt animal. "Tended by the Night's Watch. Then there are the Umber lands, known as the Shadow in olden times, because it lies in the Shadow of the Wall. House Umber were called Shadow Kings before they pledged themselves to-"

"Bent the knee" Megga, Alla and Alyce said in one voice from aside Margaery, the five ladies from the Reach sitting opposite to Lady Catelyn in that room that they shared on the top floor of the Inn. Margaery was glad that they travelled in style this time, as the journey south was far less harrowing than the ride north from Bitterbridge had been. "When Northerners do it" Alla went on in her squeaky little voice "they say 'bent the knee'. Very literal, those Northerners".

"-before they bent the knee to the Starks" Elinor went on. Lady Catelyn had taken it upon herself to teach Margaery and her ladies more about the geography and the history of the North, and Margaery had agreed. After all, she needed to know as much as possible about the people she was setting out to rule. All of them needed to. With perhaps the exception of Alyce the lot of them would no doubt be married off to Northern men and lords to cement the Tyrell-Stark alliance. "And to the west of that there is Karhold, by the Shivering Sea coast. It is ruled by the Karstarks, kinsmen to the Starks, and once their land was divided between the Shadow Kings and the Red Kings. Which were-" she stopped and stared at the map before she tentatively looked up at Lady Catelyn. "The kings of the Hornwood?"

"The Kings of the Dreadfort, the Boltons" Catelyn corrected. Margaery had found that the woman that would become her goodmother was a kind enough once you looked past the twilight in her eyes and she forgot her sorrows. As long as you did not mention King's Landing or the Lannisters or Ned Stark or – well, she was deep in gloom and worry most of the time, carving wrinkles into her face, but she took well to teaching Margaery and her ladies the lay of the land that would one day be theirs. And one day soon. They were more than halfway to Goldengrove, the seat of House Rowan, and there they would remain until Robb and Father joined them. She pulled Lionslayer closer to her breast.

 _Robb_. She missed him, him and his giant wolf. It was cold at night, especially on the road, and she wondered if she could bring them both to bed with her. Grey Wind could lay at her feet, keeping warm the foot end of her bed, and Robb could lie beside her with his strong arms wrapped around her, with his lips to her collarbone and his-

"Lady Margaery?" Catelyn spoke up, and so catapulted her from her daydreams with a blush burning on her cheeks. Oh, what would she have said if she knew that she was thinking of her son in such a fashion – but going by her expression she knew well enough, which only served to make Margaery wish that she could sink through the surface of the bed like water and hide her face from the world. "Are you paying attention? Are you tired? Should we retire these lessons until the morrow?"

"Oh no, Lady Catelyn" she waved those concerns away, thinking of a joke she once had heard from… she thought it was Lord Ashford. _What do you do if you miss your good-mother? Reload your crossbow and try again_. She had no inkling why. She and Lady Catelyn were getting along splendidly – aside from the occasional veiled threat not to break her son's heart or the casual warning that the North was, indeed, very cold. She could have guessed as much, given how much the Northerners went on and on about their winters and their wolves. "Do go on".

"Well then, how about the mercantile lore of each of the principal regions?" Catelyn suggested, to which Margaery cringed internally, a sentiment shared by all of them given the looks that they shot each other. Who in their right mind would willingly want to dedicate hours to the economics of… of anything, really? "Lady Megga – would you start? What are the principal goods provided by the Barrowlands to the greater North?"

Megga, the fatest and loudest of Margaery's ladies, at court and away from court alike, bit her lip as she thought hard on it while the door to the long but narrow room, the largest one in the largest Inn in the village still, opened to let in that paramour of Smalljon's, Bella. "Produce, baked goods, metals and… brass?" Bella nimbly walked between them and placed a tray of cheeses and wine on a table at the end of the bed, which Alyce immediately made host of. Alyce had seemed distressed of late. Margaery made an internal note to ask her about it – and about her relationship with Robar Royce.

"Very good. Yes, the Barrowlands under House Dustin, with their bannermen Moss, Ironsmith, Stout and Holt produce the lionshare of the foodstuffs of the North, along with the lands and houses sworn directly to Winterfell. They are also some of the best smiths and metalworkers in the North. Lady Alla – what can you tell me about the Rills?" Margaery seemed to recall something about Bella being a former woman of the evening in Stoney Sept, and that Robb had sent her to accompany them after he had received several complaints from the Umber men and the berserker chiefs about 'incessant moaning'. Margaery had thought that men preferred women who were vocal in bed, but perhaps it was not so. She would have to ask her. As long as she stayed away from Robb.

She had a sword now. And she was not squeamish about blood.

"Held once by House Ryder, the Horse Kings". Alla was clever, very much so, which was the reason why even though she was yet a girl unflowered she had granted the boon of becoming one of Margaery's handmaidens. She had a very easy time of learning new things. "The Ryders went extinct in the male line seven hundred years ago and the Rills, with the principal holding being Snowbourne, fell to their cadet branch, House Ryswell. They breed some of the finest mounts in the North. Their horses are the backbone of the Northern shock forces. And their principal vassals include the Glenmores of Rillwater Crossing and the Lightfoots of Trail's End".

"Very good, Lady Alla" Catelyn smiled, and Alla beamed under the praise. Margaery knew that Alla's mother, Alys Beesbury, was stern and cold woman even to her own children, and perhaps that was why Alla cleaved so closely to a mother as caring and concerned as Lady Catelyn. "Lady Margaery – the Wolfswood houses and clans". Of course she got the hard ones. She was the one that was supposed to become queen one day. She raked her memory for every single little thing that Robb had told her, as well as all the other things she had learned–

"House Glover rules the Wolfswood from Deepwood Motte. Beyond venison their principal exports are lumber and ore. House Forrester, one of their sworn houses, are the only ones in the world who can properly grow and fashion Ironwood. Other than that they provide skirmishers and archers for the Northern army. They favour longbows, and often wear dark hoods and cloaks over boiled leather armour and light chainmail. They are best deployed for harrying tactics and ambushes, though as rangers they also fight fairly competently in the melee against lightly armoured foes. You shouldn't keep them in formation next to Umber men under any circumstances, though, and as for discipline-" they were staring at her. All of them. "Um… what is it? Do I have something on my face?" She had been eating a consomme for supper, after all.

"You have been spending far too much time around my son" Catelyn noted, which reduced all the other ladies into fits of giggles and snickers. Margaery blushed and looked away, but from across the narrow room Catelyn reached out and took her by the hand. "Don't fret. I am glad that my son has found someone that isn't as terribly bored by military matters as most noble ladies are. As a boy I feared that he would go down the way of Daeron Targaryen, the first of his name: die too young in battle, seeing war as a game".

"He does not do that" Margaery replied in a quiet voice as the giggles died down. "He only wants to go home and rule in peace. He doesn't want glory or fame. He wants justice, and then he wants to care for his family and his people. He wants to stop fighting and start building. He is a good man, and-" they were still staring at her, though now in a much more different way.

"You really do care for him, do you?" Catelyn smiled at her, smiled at her earnestly, and Margaery nodded back at her, suddenly shy. "I am very happy to see it. My son is a fortunate man". She leant back against the wall behind her bed and turned her head towards the room's solitary window, a wistful expression on her face. Margaery could not help but to think of something that had been bothering her in the silence that followed, and so she finally spoke up.

"Lady Catelyn, if I might ask" she began, feeling overly formal but still uncertain about calling her 'mother' or 'good-mother', as she and Robb weren't even betrothed yet. "What will be your title?" Catelyn looked at her, and she did feel a little foolish. "I mean, after Robb and I are married, too. What is your title now? I know the Northerners do not hold very close on formality, but we will have to introduce you at court in Highgarden, and we do stand very much on ceremony there". She wondered mostly what her own title would be, though asking that flat out would only serve to make her seem self-obsessed in the eyes of her would-be good-mother.

"I haven't given a thought to it". Lady Catelyn frowned softly. "I've always been Lady Tully or Lady Stark. Now" she sighed and looked back out the window. "I suppose that it would have been Queen Mother or Queen Dowager, had my Ned been King in the North. But" she shook her head, almost to herself. "But I think that maybe 'Lady Mother' would be best. I have never made any pretentions towards being anything else". She looked back to Margaery and smoothed out her features in kind silence. "What should concern you more is your own title, Lady Margaery. Queen consort or queen regnant?"

"Queen consort, obviously" she answered. It was the clear answer. The distinction was a simple one – a queen consort held no official powers or rights, while a queen regnant was a ruler of her own accord. A woman of the Reach never aspired to actual royal power, though she could hold it just the same, and… why was Lady Catelyn looking at her like that? _What is it with all the looks today?_ "Is something wrong?"

"The Northerners do not distinguish. They will have one title: Queen in the North. And you will have enough power to only be overruled by a single man within the bounds of your kingdom: Robb. They will listen to you. They will obey you when you mediate between them. Win their loyalty, and they will march into their graves for you as readily as they do for my son". The silence was tangible, the surprise in her heart visible for all of them to see. She should have expected that. "You have seen how the Lords defer to me, just because I was married to their Liege Lord and because I am the mother of their King. You will have the same power. More of it. Lady Margaery: what will you do with this power?" Absently Margaery noticed that Catelyn looked pleased at her confusion.

Not out of spite, perhaps. It was because Catelyn knew then, for certain and for the first time, that she wasn't doting on Robb because of the power that he would provide her. Honestly she hadn't even given it a second thought. Margaery knew that noble women in the North had generally more independence and power than their Southron counterparts, she had known that for quite a while, and she had always desired the freedom of thought and action that power provided, but being a queen regnant didn't bring with it power as much as it brought with it responsibilities. Power and responsibility were two very different things.

And she didn't know the first thing about actually ruling… well, anything. "Lady Margaery?" Catelyn wondered as she let the sword fall from her grasp and she put her head in her hands. "Are you quite alright? I am sorry if I upset you-"

"The Umbers had a lord that used to eat people" Margaery all but whispered, shocked horror on her voice. "The Boltons used to flay people. Skin them and wear them as cloaks! The Whitehills hate the Forresters, the Glovers hate the Umbers, the Umbers hate the Cerwyns and the Hornwoods-"

"And now we know who has been paying the most attention during your lectures, Lady Catelyn" Elinor smiled at Margaery's would-be good-mother.

"-and everyone except for the Manderlys and Wells worship trees! Trees!" She shook her head in great dismay and shuddered. "How in the Seven Hells am I supposed to rule that? I have seen how Robb has to bark to get them to fall in line. I'm not that commanding. Some of even the women – the women! – are thrice my size and have five times my weight. They will eat me. Literally".

"Well, to be fair, Rimefrost Umber was notoriously mad" Catelyn supplied from aside, to which Margaery only groaned, in a loud and decidedly un-ladylike fashion, and sank deeper down into her hands. "Do not worry, Margaery" her soft hands lifted her up by the sides of her head and looked her closely in the eyes. "I will teach you all that I know. I will make sure that they will follow you more readily than they do even Robb".

"Thank you, Catelyn" Margaery whispered at her, to which her would-be good-mother shook her head.

"Please, Margaery, call me Cat. All my friends do. I do hope we will be friends". And the sorrow seemed to lift off of her, if only a little.

"Thank you, Cat" Margaery smiled back at her. It suddenly occurred to her that she would have two mothers soon enough. And, surprisingly, she wasn't averse to the notion at all.

As they talked and thought all throughout the night, she wondered what Robb was doing.

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

"I wonder that Margaery's doing" Robb spoke aloud, and all the other men with him in the tent groaned loudly, their heads in their hands and their mind in their cups. "She's probably eating something. Like cheese. She likes cheese". He took another sip of his wine and smiled broadly at Jon. "She's pretty. Like, really, really pretty".

"So you keep saying, brother" Jon sighed and moved to take the cup away from him, but he missed and fell over in his chair so hard that it nearly tumbled over and fell to the ground. Of course, what was the reunion between two brothers and a celebration of victory if there was no drinking or feasting to mark the occasion as special? And so they had taken heavily to the wine they had taken from the Lannister carts and saddlebags. It was, according to Robb, the sweetest drink there was: the wine of a vanquished enemy. "Could everyone stop moving?" Jon complained in a drawl before he slumped forwards in his seat and hit the surface of the oaken table in the middle of the tent with a loud thud. "Ow" he winced unconvincingly.

"You lot think she likes flowers?" Robb asked the rest of the table, which were on one side Patrek Mallister, Hugo Vance, that old knight Janas and Marq Piper, and on the other Greatjon, Smalljon, Ronnel Stout, Owen and Robar Royce, the Umber heir and the Bronze Knight sitting closely together in earnest discussion. "I think she likes flowers. She's always in the gardens, and she smells like flowers. I think I shall have them build another glass garden in Winterfell, just for her. And a harp. She told me that she likes playing the harp. A harp with flowers on it… or a harp made out of flowers".

"Can you believe that he's only known the lass for a little while, and already he's marrying her?" Owen asked the young Lord Piper across the table, to which he got only a shrug in response. "I mean, she was obviously out to seduce him, wasn't she? And it's been no time at all! He can't be so in love already! Did she slip him a potion or something?"

"He's young, she's fair, and he's a king" Marq noted with a sigh as he whisked about his wine inside his cup and looked for the trail it left behind on the silver lining, being a true connoisseur of vintages as he was. "That's a powerful combination, clansman. It could have been a lot worse. Look at that inbred abomination that currently graces the Iron Throne. I say we toast. To young love!" he raised his cup, and from almost everyone, even Jon who could not even sit upright, the toast was echoed.

Except from Smalljon and Robar. "I do not know what to do" Smalljon had finally gotten the Bronze Knight to confess to what had been troubling him so for the last days since leaving Pinkmaiden, by way of copious amounts of what Smalljon's great-uncles would have referred to as "piss", and it was clear that the Umber heir now regretted it firmly. "I dishonoured her. I did. No matter how much she kissed me afterwards. And in the sept, no less! Gods – what if I made her with child?!"

"Would the bairn be a Stone, a Rivers or a Flowers?" Smalljon wondered aloud, and Robar Royce, who had stood fearless before a rain of arrows and laid low the Mountain, uttered a strangled sound of drunken horror and put his hand to his eyes. "What's the bloody issue, mate?" Smalljon sighed. "Next time you meet Lady Graceford, just take her by the hand to the godswood and have a few witnesses with you as you say the words and wrap your fucking cloak around her shoulders. Not that much of a thing to fuss over, if you're sweet on her and she's got your child growing in her belly. Which she might not. No offence to your cocksureness, mate, but few men hit the boss the first time they loose an arrow, if you ken my meaning".

"Oh, blessed Seven!" Robar crumpled back into his chair. "I have to marry her" he said aloud, before he then shook his head and lowered his voice into a whisper. "No, I will marry her. I _want_ to marry her. Gods help me, what will my father make of this? We Remember. Memory never fades".

"You're an odd little man" Greatjon remarked, having overheard it all but obviously not caring anything at all for the fates and lives of the Valeman. "Memory, memory, memory – my father was dumb as a post years before he died. Lost all of his memories to age. I was Lord long before they gave the Sword to me" he glanced angrily at his son "and long before they had me break the Chains. So fuck memory, I say!" he raised his tankard and hollered. "To Stark! And to Stannis Baratheon! Long may he reign over shite and fuck-all!"

"To Stark!" the others echoed and raised their cups, and Robb grinned and Jon smirked where they sat, side by side at the head of the table, their Direwolves curled up along the walls of the tent close together with their heads leant over each other's backs as they snoozed. "Stark! The King in the North!" After another round of toasting and cheering a shape intruded on their celebration from opposite Robb – Maester Ebbert. "Forgive me, your Grace-" he began, but got no further.

"Oi, Maester!" Greatjon boomed, and Ebbert all but jumped. "You're a Whitehill, aren't you?" he rumbled as he stood and walked over towards the much smaller man in the grey robes, looming over him like a giant of legend. "I bloody well hate Whitehills. Got no respect for a man's land, encroaching on woods and Ironwoods that aren't yours. You've spread your legs for the Seven, but you haven't even got the courtesy of being Southrons like the Manderlys. Tell me, little grey rat of Highpoint" Greatjon leaned in over him, and Robb could tell that Ebbert was visibly sweating. "Why haven't your brother brought more than three hundred men with him to the banners? Why aren't you fighting in the King's war?"

"I am a Maester, Lord Umber" Ebbert replied, the tone and steel of his voice in stark contrast to his countenance's nervousness. "I've sworn a vow of peace. No man shall ever be hurt by my hand, no matter the darkness in his heart or what banner he flies. Peace and order is what I believe in, with all my heart".

"Fucking cowardice, is what it is" Greatjon looked around the room and grinned. "You lot's always been meek at heart. Those Forresters you hate? They're all half Southron now, after old Gregor married that Crownlander wench. And still they are more Northern than you. Where the fuck is your bloody spine, _Maester_ Ebbert?"

"Sometimes strength comes in the form of not fighting" Ebbert said at last and then pushed past the Greatjon to come before Robb, who had been watching the whole exchange in silence. He wanted to know what the Maester was made out of, after all. "Your Grace, there are two men and a boy to see you" he told, severity marring his face. "They claim they are the last of the Brotherhood without Banners".

"Well then, send them in" Robb said as he stood, a little unsteady before he shook his head and forced down his drunkenness. Ebbert nodded and left, bringing Small-and-Greatjon with him along with Marq and Janas who helped Jon away to his tent. And soon they were sent in – one man, Northern and of average height, one tall lad with lush black hair and vivid blue eyes, and one short boy with pale blonde hair and deeply blue eyes that almost appeared purple. But as they knelt before him where he stood, all as one in their worn leathers and dirtied travelling clothes splotched with mud and blood, Robb only had eyes for the Northerner.

"Harwyn?" Robb asked as he took the man by the wrist and raised him up to stand on his own two feet. He might have been bearded and thinner of hair, but it was him, one of the very same twenty men that had ridden South with Father and Sansa and Arya from Winterfell all those months ago. "Gods, man, I can't believe that it is you! Is-?"

"Only six of your Lord father's guard survived the massacre at the Red Keep, your Grace" Harwyn bent his head and stepped back and away, gesturing to the young men behind him to rise. "The Gods and Ancestors kept their shields over me. I was lucky, your Grace. Your Lord father – not so much". He looked over his shoulder at the two. "These lot here's Edric Dayne, the boy Lord of Starfall and the Torrentine, and Gendry". Harwyn had been one of the best riders of Winterfell, and the one to teach Arya and Bran before he rode South with Father. "I took up with the Brotherhood Without Banners, but with the Brotherhood now all dead…"

"Most of the others're dead" said the large fellow, the one that looked so much like Renly and Robert, and even that bastard child Edric that Margaery had brought with her to Pinkmaiden, that it was more than merely uncanny, and Robb wondered if he too was somehow related to Robert Baratheon. Another bastard? The late Stag King was supposed to have had dozens. "Lem got his throat cut by that boy-raping septon in the Bloody Mummers. Tom got speared through the balls by one of the Mountain's men. Thoros got a sword through the eye, and then Lord Berric just crumpled to the ground, like a puppet that's got its strings cut. Anguy; he's probably alive and off wenching or something. Brotherhood Without-bloody-Banners – so much for us". Under Robb's gaze he swallowed hard before he knelt down on the ground just like he had done earlier. "M'name's Gendry, m'Lord. I used to smith, in King's Landing. Um… Lord Berric knighted me, he did. Knight of the Hollow Hill. But I dunno if that counts, with him being all pagan to you lot, and-" he, wisely enough, stopped talking.

"Berric Dondarrion was praised by my father, Eddard" Robb nodded, considering the fact that the man was simple but seemed loyal enough and was built like a battering ram, like a less hairy version of Smalljon though less tall and even broader and more muscled. "He was a man of honour. If you enter my service you will never want for work, Ser Gendry, neither as smith nor as knight. By my power I uphold your anointment. I, Robb Stark, name you-" Gendry's eyes shot open at the name, a reflex of a reaction born of familiar knowledge, and Robb noticed something queer about that. The hedge knight looked to Harwin, confused.

"Your Grace" Harwin said from aside in a hushed tone belaying a smile "we've news of your sister".

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** It occurred to me that we've never seen Jon either drunk or on a boat. So here you are. You're welcome.

It's remarkably hard to keep track of all events that transpire in the books, ya know? Let's just say that we've officially moved into A Storm of Swords territory from this chapter onwards. It's only going to get darker and weirder from here on out.

You might notice that I'm killing off some characters to the left and to the right, especially some of the "Bad Guys". Partially this is because I feel that too many villains for the main characters to oppose lends itself only to a lack of focus, and I like to keep a tight rein on the themes and undertones of my writing. Also, some principal villains that are not complex felt a little... cartoonish is not the right word. If this was a cartoon it would be one of the horrible ones that no kids would ever watch because of all the tits and violence. Vargo Hoat and some others, being evil for the LOLs and little else, says more about GRRM's view of the world than of the narrative of the story in my eyes.

There will be other antagonists, though. All in good time, dear readers. I encourage you to patience. Also, I recalled that Alyce Graceford was pregnant in the novels around this time, and since story and all... I could not resist the chance at some good old fashioned drama.

So, anyway, that was that. I hope you've enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	10. All Men Must Serve

Chapter Ten – All Men Must Serve

* * *

 ** _The Bloody Maester_**

"You hesitated, Jon" King Robb remarked to his brother as Ebbert on his mount stood behind them where they sat atop their horses, listening in on their conversation while their army took Harrenhal. "He was an evil man, mate. No doubts about that. You asked for his death yourself. So why the squeamishness?"

"T'wasn't squeamishness" Jon glowered, like he always did, a tall man in dark leathers and cloak, a head of dark hair and darker eyes, a man that Ebbert could tell was destined for dark and brutal things. "I had never executed a man before then, Stark" he grumbled on, explaining himself to his brother's probing questions about their behaviour in the days earlier. "I had no idea of what to say at first. I thought it was supposed to be your allotted task, not mine. Never saw myself as a headsman".

"You know how I used to call you 'Snow' and you'd call me 'Stark' when we were little?" Robb remarked absently as they watched, cocking his head to the side as he watched the Bulwer men under the command of Roren Neversleep march through the breaches in the walls in quadruple file, spears and shields angled at the defending Lannister foes within as their crossbowmen fired into the enormous keep behind them. "Well, that won't do now, won't it? Because we're both Starks. And 'brother's a word a little unwieldly in conversation, isn't it?" He looked aside to Jon and gave him a nearly childish grin. "How about I call you Snowbird? Snow shrike? Or Lark?"

"How about I smack you across the bonce?" Jon muttered, then craned his head around to look at Ebbert and all the rest of King Robb's following, his armoured and mounted bodyguards who were now all staring at this long-faced fellow in black. He cleared his throat and looked back to Harrenhal. "Your Grace" he added, and Robb chuckled aloud.

"The day is fine, the winter is mild, I'm to be married to the most beautiful woman on the face of the world, I cannot stop winning my battles, and my bratty little brother isn't allowed to be narky at me anymore" he grinned and reached down into his saddlebags to pull out his crown of swords of iron and bronze, placing it on his head. Lady Dowager Catelyn had told him that the crown hadn't fitted him very well at first, but Ebbert saw before him a man who seemed to have been born to it. "Despite everything that's happened, Jon" he looked aside to his brother and grinned even wider than before "sometimes it's good to be king". He faltered, the smile fading from his face as he looked towards the giant ruined castle of Harren the Black. "Forwards!" he called and urged his white destrier into a trot.

Ebbert remained in the back of the honour guard, holding back his horse as the lords and the warriors and that malicious giant, Greatjon Umber, passed him on their horses with malicious glares sent his way. He weathered it. He weathered it all. Pride counted for nothing, and as long as he held to the vows that he had sworn to the very bedrock of the Citadel he was invincible in spirit.

 _Never spill human blood._

 _Preserve the sanctity of knowledge._

 _Strive for a world for men, not monsters._

He was a Maester of the Citadel, and that meant something, something far more important than his blood had ever meant. Ludd, Torrhen and Gryff Whitehill be damned, he was a Maester. He had that surname no longer. He would not serve in their schemes unless the Citadel asked him to. For knowledge was power, and power was meant for the good of all living beings. A world for men, not monsters. Good lay in the heart of every man, and so everyman, if exposed to the right knowledge, could be saved. Wisdom, goodness, freedom – in a way they were all the same thing. If you chained yourself with knowledge and put aside all earthly desires, then you were truly free.

His teachers had called him idealistic and naïve, too dedicated to the letters of his oaths and not the spirit of them. They said that he, like untempered steel, had yet to experience the temperature of the world to cool his fire. And like untampered steel he would shatter. But they were old men, soft in their towers, given to whoring and drinking and forsaking their vows as much as any baser men.

They were not true Maesters. He was a true Maester, he and Maester Gormon, his greatest teacher. Few of the other ones had any right to carry the chains around their necks.

He had thought Qyburn worthy, once – but that man had forsaken everything his order stood for.

"Your Grace!" As King Robb and his honour guard approached the ruined walls of Harrenhal, the towers looming overhead then just as much as they had for miles when they had ridden to the castle with the Riverland contingent of the king's army, a man on horseback with a visored Northern helmet and with a black and white surcoat over his chainmail armour rode up to them from around the wall. A heavy cavalry rider from the Lordship of the Grey Cliffs, along the coast of the Shivering Sea, in service to House Karstark, the Sun in the North. "Your Grace!"

"Have you word of my sister?" King Robb wasted no time asking the rider as the man removed his helmet, and Ebbert recognised him as Darrick Overton, one of Rickard Karstark's rider captains and most loyal bannermen, with his brown hair paled and narrowed into points with copious amounts of chalk, a practice common along the Grey Cliffs and in the Grey Headlands. "News of Arya?"

"No, your Grace" the rider reported with a bow from his saddle, and Robb's face darkened. "We've searched all the ruins. We've found m'Lord Karstark's son and heir. Several other Northmen prisoners with him. But no Lady Arya".

"She'd hate having anyone call her a Lady" Robb spoke to no one at all before he nodded to the rider, who brought his horse in alongside the honour guard near the back, withers-to-withers with Rymund, the Riverlander minstrel with his lute on his back and his flute at his hip like some caricature of a knight. "You've done good work today, you Karstark and Bulwer men" the Young Wolf went on as they rode into the ruined castle proper. "We took some one hundred striped horses back in Harroway from Lannister deserters. Fiery steeds, hardy and strong. Ebbert! I want half given to Neversleep, and the other to Rickard Karstark, to do with as they please!"

"Certainly, your Grace". Ebbert had made sure that he always wore ink, quill and parchment on his body as he travelled by the warrior King's side, and he even have had a special saddle made with a leather-covered wooden plate that could be affixed to the pommel. For ease of writing, of course. The King wasn't asking him to write it down and make it so, to carry his orders onwards, but he was telling him to note things down for more appropriate times so that he did not forget his better ideas. It was certainly a good thing, having a King that never went back on his word like that. And it was all the better for Ebbert to report back to Willas and Maester Gormon with the information that he came across.

Still he was not privy to the Young Wolf's war council. He was asked to come along and carry messages, most of them sealed and thus impossible to be read by him under the scrutiny that was ever present in the camp, where he had no time or ability to reseal broken wax sigils. He only got snippets of information, but that was more than enough. By ravens sent from castles that they stopped by, by riders amongst the Riverlander servantry or nobility alike with swift horses, he got his reports sent south, to Highgarden and the Citadel.

He felt no shame in reporting on his King. Any loyalty he had to the North was secondary at best. And he needed to be watched over, counselled. Just like how Grandmaester Pycelle advised the king of the Iron Throne. Perhaps Robb Stark and his rebellion would fail in time, like how most of the Conclave saw it, but perhaps not. And Maester Gormon saw the wisdom in entertaining all options and exhausting all avenues of research. He'd be by the King's side, and slowly he'd gain the Young Wolf's trust until he could council him with certain loyalty, guide him and shepherd him towards greater wisdom and kindlier reason. Until then he'd be at the Wolf's side, reporting what he saw and heard.

And as they entered the first courtyard of Harrenhal he saw the scene of a slaughter.

"Clear out the Lannister dead towards the eastern parts of the castle!" Robb Stark, being a practical sort, hardly seemed to notice how the dead littered the walls all around them, urged into makeshift hurdles and pens and cages and left there by defenders now dead. He did stare at them, but his voice wasted no time grieving, shouting commands to the left and right. "Have them thrown into ditches for the carrion! Owen, Smalljon, Dacey, Patrek, Darrick – each of you gather up some men and divide the castle amongst yourselves. Find survivors, and if there're none to be found, bring the corpses here for burial. Deep burial. We're to fortify this place, and we can't have the rot seep into the waters around these parts".

"Aye, your Grace!" they saluted and turned their horses about, setting off through the camp even as the Bulwer men and Karstark riders cheered at the arrival of their king. Robb would have led the charge on Harrenhal himself had both old Rickard Karstark and Roren Neversleep begged of him to lead the attack, independent of one another. Rickard's sole surviving son and heir had been a prisoner within those ruined walls, and the Bulwer commander had said something about trees and dreams that made King Robb accept his request instantly. He allowed the two to share command. It was a gargantuan fortress, after all, and the Lannisters hadn't left behind enough loyal men to protect it all. Ebbert knew that King Robb would not make the same mistake.

"Marq, take some soldiers of yours to the castle's armoury" King Robb said as he dismounted alongside his brother and made a motion for their horses to be taken away and stabled, to which the rest of his honour guard and escort did the same. Ebbert too, who followed close to Young King. To do his duty, of course – to all of his masters. "The archers are running out of arrows, and we're short on fletchers. Lyra" he looked to one of the newest additions to his honour guard, the third daughter of Maege Mormont who was far less supple and far moodier than her eldest sister. "Account for our losses and gains. Vances, Rymund – have the camp marked up and set, and set the pages and squires to find less wet and drafty chambers in the towers for the wounded".

"He really has gotten good at this" Greatjon, standing beside Jon Stark, the White Wolf in black, muttered as he watched the Young Wolf command the warriors around him like a veteran of a dozen wars five times his age would have. "I knew he had it in him. Gods, lad, if it doesn't feel good to be a free man fighting for a king that is his own". Ebbert knew that there was no love lost between his former family and the Umbers, and so he tried not to hold the Greatjon's insults and confrontational behaviour against him. Tried.

"War's a game that Robb's always understood" Jon noted back, Ebbert quietly moving up to stand behind them to listen in, knowing that every shred of information could turn out to be vital in the greater scheme of things. "The only lessons he ever cared about from Maester Luwin. Of course, I didn't listen to those at all. Have you ever seen Robb with a lance, Lord Umber?" he wondered, to which the Greatjon shook his head. "I could match him in swordplay, outshoot him with the longbow, but I could never knock him out of the saddle. Though half of it is due to his stupid bloody horse, no doubt".

"You jealous of him?" Umber asked, and Jon grew silent at the question. "You must've been. A Snow among the Starks, almost the same age as the one always meant to rule but always passed over, unfavoured. Are you still?"

"No" Jon answered at last, and Ebbert puzzled at his words. "I was. I used to be. Robb was the one who was good with girls, the one who everyone loved, the one to inherit, the one to bear the name. All I ever wanted was a keep and a name to call my own. And he's given me both. Everything I have now I owe to him. So no, he's my brother – and my King. The only thing I have towards him is loyalty". He pasued and gave a shadow of a smirk as King Robb, finally done with all his barking and booming, turned back to them. "And the occasional urge to twat him across the bonce".

"Which you don't get to" King Robb shook his head and made right for the three of them, pushing past Jon and Greatjon. He glanced back at his brother and tapped his crown with the tip of his finger, as if to indicate just why that was again, before he looked to the makeshift cells along the walls of the next courtyard over. "No word of Arya" he bit down on his words as Ebbert and the two lords followed him. "I've sent patrols. I even sent Harwyn leading them. All over the Riverlands, searching every village, road and path for her and Joffrey's disloyal dog. And yet nothing. Four days since Harroway, and still nothing".

"She'll turn up soon, Robb" Jon assured his brother. "You've offered five hundred gold dragons and a Lordship to whomever returns her to us. Which Lordship would that be, by the way?" he asked as they turned a corner and saw more cells and yet more dead men, the bands under Smalljon already hard at work cleaning the corpses away. "You've only got so much land".

"Much of the North is empty – stony land, good to build and sow on if you can clear away all the rocks" Robb told him, glaring at the walls, looking like he wanted the Lannister defenders to come back to life just so he could kill them all over again. "But I was thinking of Oldstones. The walls are all but gone, but the land is good and the castle foundations still stand. It's near the headwaters of the Blue Fork, and it's not too far from Ironman's Bay. Could help to foster trade-" he quieted and reached up to rub his eyes. He often did that. A sign of stress, perhaps?

One of the cells had been set aside. He saw that then, a dark and broken dungeon half bared to the light of the sky above, its fallen walls replaced with crude iron bars and bands bolted to the walls, and men, dead and dying, were strapped to its walls, left to starve and rot by uncaring guards. It had to be two dozen men in there. Now corpses, left to rot by the few brave and loyal Westerlander men who still guarded Harrenhal now in death, let their stink fill it. By the entrance a Lannister man lay slumped, Bulwer quarrels protruding from his punctured red breastplate, a strange sword fallen from his hand. Ebbert picked it up. It was a broadsword, like any other, and like almost all finer Westerland blades it had a gilded guard and pommel, but the guard was short, barely covering the hand on either side if one held it. Ebbert brought it with him as they entered the cell, marvelling at the forgework, focused until Greatjon spoke. "This one's alive". He looked up.

And stopped dead in the middle of his step.

"Water…" an old man, dried out and gaunt but still alive, whispered where he was shackled to the wall, his grey robes soiled and stinking around him, but those fatherly blue eyes – eyes that was as much a lie as anything else that monster had ever said – were still the same as the day that Ebbert had last seen him. "Water… please…"

"Get away from him" Ebbert said as Greatjon and the White Wolf made to unshackle that monster of a man. "He deserves what he has gotten, and a thousand times more than this". The looked to him, wondering, suspicious still yet not moving for the shackled man. "His name is Qyburn. He used to be a Maester – until his rank was stripped from him. He would have lost his life for his crimes, had he not escaped Lord Hightower's justice".

"This fellow here? He looks kind, like someone's uncle or grandfather, and he's dying". King Robb turned his eyes to him, glaring fiercely, winter blue eyes gleaming. "Explain yourself, Maester. Now".

"He performed vivisections" he began, staring still at that horrid old man, who's expressionless brown eyes, so seemingly warm, seemed to sneer back at him. "He drugged sailors and whores into deep sleep before he took them to his laboratory and cut them open as they lived. Cut their limbs off to see if he could make them move on their own. He experimented on children, too. Especially twins. He once opened the belly of a pregnant woman to see if the child within her could be grown within a jar". Ebbert spat at the man, hatred burning in his heart. "He profaned his chain. He profaned the sanctity of knowledge. He's a monster, a practitioner of the dark arts. A necromancer who has always strived to raise the dead to be his thralls, and he deserves only to be put to death".

The King looked at him, and then back to the monster, seeing no denial or shame in his eyes. He glanced at Greatjon and his brother, and it was the latter who then spoke. "I've seen the dead that walk" he said at last. "Horrible things, Robb. Any man who seeks to do something of that kind-"

"Aye, if it must be done... Though it sickens me to kill an old, weak man" King Robb said, with a tone to his voice that made it clear to all that he was disgusted and appalled but forsook kindness for the greater good of the world. He trusted Ebbert – but right then Ebbert couldn't care less about his trust, or the mission he had undertaken at Maester Gormon's behest. Finally he shook his head and made a face of loathing and disgust. "No. I'll have no part in this, Maester. The man that passes the sentence should swing the sword. If he's as guilty as you say you'll do it yourself".

And faced with that choice Ebbert's world crumbled around him.

 _Never spill human blood._

He had sworn an oath. An oath that was more precious to him than the blood in his veins and the family that had birthed him and raised him. Violence was a weakness, a symptom of a lack of knowledge. Any man with anything inside of his head knew better than to strive to harm anyone. Violence begat nothing but more violence. Death and misery and war were brothers in all things.

 _Preserve the sanctity of knowledge._

But Gods help him, he served a higher calling. This man, this monster, had betrayed everything the Order stood for. Everything the Conclave had hoped to build. "Gods help me" Ebbert whispered.

He did not want to do it. He did not. But he had to. Gods help him, that man deserved to die more than anyone else who had walked the face of the world.

He put that Westerlander sword through Qyburn's chest – and regretted it instantly. He regretted it with all his heart, wishing that he could turn back time, but the blood was already on his hand, staining the hem of his grey robes. "This is on you, Maester" Greatjon said aloud, and Ebbert did not care anything at all about the disgust in his voice. "'Sworn to peace', my arse".

And so they left the cell, King Robb and Greatjon and the White Wolf, and Ebbert was alone with the corpse. The corpse he had made. _Gods_. The sword he had taken from the dead guard clattered to the stone floor, and he flinched at the sound. He had dropped it without knowing. Qyburn's empty eyes stared at him, accusing him, and shaking he fell to his knees before that dead gaze. His hands trembled like aspen leaves, and blood spotted them. Blood, red and dark and sticky and warm but quickly cooling and turning black. Red to black. Those dead eyes stared at him. Red to black.

 _A world for men, not monsters_.

But it was war in the world, and evil was everywhere. Red to black. Even in him. Red to black.

 _A world for monsters, not men_.

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

"So" she began slowly, her great embroidered piece of white tapestry flat with one corner laid in her lap as she looked up at Alyce Graceford from her cushioned seat in the gardens of Goldengrove. "You are with child?"

"Yes, my Lady". Alyce stared down at her slippers beneath the hem of her Highgarden gown, cheeks red with shame as she bit down on her lip. "I- I think so". She thought so? Was that not something you knew, for certain, in the very bottom core of your heart? "I haven't bled, and I have been sick al throughout the mornings when waking, and-"

"Do not fret" Cat, who had risen from her seat at the news, took the girl – no, Margaery assumed that she was a woman now, in plenty of ways most certainly – by the shoulders and urged her to calm, to which Alyce clutched at her arms like they were her only path to salvation in a dark and stormy sea. And they might very well have been. Noblemen who sired bastards were perhaps snickered at on the worst side of things, shrugged at and dismissed as merely men more commonly, but noblewomen who did? They were called slatterns and harlots, scorned and made the subjects of japes and dishonour. As if making children was somehow unnatural and sinful. As if not every living human in the world had not been born from at least some form of passion, twisted at times as it might be. "These things are sometimes hard to distinguish, and difficult to tell".

"Whose is it?" Margaery asked her handmaiden, who looked to be on the edge of tears, and Alyce physically flinched at her words. She needn't have. She was just trying to know if someone had forced themselves on her, or if it was some singer or honourless sellsword that had seduced her. "Who is the father? Do you know?" She had not meant to sound so harsh, so why had it come out that way?

"Ser Royce, my Lady" Alyce whispered back as the tears began to roll down her cheeks, and she looked so lost and frightened that Margaery felt a pang of pain in her own heart out of sympathy. "There's been no one else, my Lady. I am certain, I am-" Margaery lifted the embroidery off her lap and set it aside to rise and go embrace her lady-in-waiting, who promptly crumbled at her shoulder, sobbing. "He came back from fighting the Mountain" she went on, struggling for words. "I was so afraid for him. I shouldn't have been. He betrayed us. Betrayed you. But I was. And he told me that he was not- and I-" she managed no more.

"Do not worry, Alyce" Margaery assured her and pushed her away gently, looking deep into her eyes. "I will that everything is sorted out. Elinor, Megga, Alla" she called out to her other three ladies, and they promptly came to her side. "All of you, go back to your chambers. Brienne will escort you. Lady Catelyn and I will talk. Rest. I will handle this". They curtsied and left, followed by Brienne who bowed towards Margaery before she vanished around the bend of the colonnade in the sunny gardens of Goldengrove, heading towards the opulent guest house. When they had she let the motherly smile fall from her face and she returned to her chair to more fall down into it than gracefuly sit. "Seven that are One" she whispered and put her hand to her temple. "Her father is going to be furious". And Oren Graceford was a notoriously violent man, one of Randyll Tarly's principal commanders and cronies. She actually feared for Alyce's life.

They had arrived in Goldengrove two days hence, passing under those great towered vaults in vast walls made of yellow stone in silent awe, the entirety of House Rowan – Lord Mathis, his wife Bethany to whom Margaery was related through Grandmother, his two sons and his daughter, the eldest, and his younger brother – coming out to meet her with much pomp and circumstance. Father and Garlan were still at least a fortnight away from Goldengrove, as they were marching along with Grandmother's carriage, but until then Goldengrove and its great gilded oaken doors stood open to her and her brothers for as long as they desired to stay.

Margaery enjoyed the great golden-yellow castle. Stylish windows were scattered generously across the walls in a seemingly random pattern, for in the days that she had walked the second uppermost of its tiered gardens, gardens that jutted out from the hilltop that the castle once had been built on but now was more of a part of it in itself, she had found no reason behind their design. Old was that mighty castle, built again and again and anew every half-millennia, the Lords of House Rowan, Marshalls of the Northmarch, tracing their descent all the way back through the fog of ages to Garth Greenhand himself by his daughter, Rowan Gold-Tree. Some said that Rowan was the mother, or ancestor at least, of Lann the Clever, the founder of House Lannister.

If so, they had already made good work of distancing themselves from that familial bond. Mathis Rowan was well-liked, prudent and honourable, and had never gotten on with Tywin Lannister, especially after the murder of Elia Martell and her children. He had publically denounced the deed, calling it abominable and black in the eyes of the Gods. But his House was rich, influential and strategically important – and more importantly, he had for a long time been an advisor to Father, and a friend to Grandfather Leyton. He was loyal to her family.

Only time would tell if he was loyal to her, though.

She had to admit that, as pretty as it was, life in Goldengrove was as dull as masonry compared to life in the bustling military court of Pinkmaiden. The Court of Wolves. In retrospect she wondered why they called it that. It made it sound perilous and treacherous, and only a few of the Northerners had even as much plotted against each other for power or political gain. They had argued, shouted, bickered and brawled, but never had they ever made to end one another, or scheme like they did in King's Landing or Highgarden. Perhaps they had a different sort of temperament, those Northerners.

Or perhaps it was due to strong and uncompromising leadership. She was given to believe the latter. Even though it lay on the edge of the Reach Goldengrove was warmer than the Riverlands, and the cold was far less biting even if the onset of Winter was making itself known, she still felt the absence by her side. She worried. And she felt very silly for it. Robb could take care of himself. He had done fine in his warring since before she had met him or even known his name. And he had Grey Wind to look after him. He would be back to her soon enough. Safe and sound of health.

Yet still she worried. Reason with herself as tough she could, he was still off to war, and she was prone to worrying about a great many things. So she immersed herself in Cat's long talks on the North, teaching her about the land that she would one day rule if all went according to the plans that they had made. The newest exercise was one of the most difficult one – trying to acquaint herself with the genealogy of the old and venerable House Stark that she would marry into. It was tedious work. She had a mind to sit Robb down after the war was over and having him learn the name of every single person with the name Tyrell to have lived since Aegon's days. See how he'd like it.

It was difficult to remember all of those assorted people, so Cat had suggested adopting a memory aid: a tapestry. It wasn't a proper tapestry, not really, as it was nothing but a large sheet of white linen cornered with grey, but meticulously she had begun to stich the names of the members of House Stark, living or dead, into it by generation, connected to each other by treads to form a family tree. All names and lines were black but for the ones denoting the Lords of Winterfell – those she stitched in gold – and she started at Robb and his siblings and worked her way backwards and upwards over the tapestry. That was what she had been working on when Alyce had requested an audience so formally. And that tapestry was what she let lie on the table beside her as she sat grumbling over the fate of Alyce Graceford and her unborn child.

"It would be easiest for her to have Ser Royce hold to his honour and marry her, forcefully if need be" Margaery muttered entirely to herself, running the tip of her finger in circles at her temple. She knew that vows sword at sword-point were not enforceable by the septons and the religious authorities, but… "Count for nothing the honour of knights. Even the bravest man becomes terrified at a wedding. Grandmother used to say that".

It was not as if the union was unfavourable for Royce. Graceford was a proud and old family, with wealth and a good name, and Alyce was Oren Graceford's only daughter. Worse it was on the Graceford side of things. Ser Robar was a second son, his house ancient but not wealthy at all in anything but swords and bronze, and Runstone, the seat of his father, was far away in the Vale of Arryn. It was likely that the union would be refused by Lord Oren – after he beat the child out of his daughter with his own two hands. There was always the chance of the two eloping, Alyce staying and rasing the child in Margaery's service while Robar remained in Robb's honour guard, or maybe the two running off to Runestone if Robb gave Royce leave to do so. Or maybe…

"Should I have her drink moon tea?" Margaery asked Cat, who had been quietly watching as she mulled over the task at hand, and she could not help but glower at the expression Cat got. "Gods, I feel like I am committing some atrocity. Would it not be murder, killing the babe within her like that? Gods – when does life begin?"

"At first breath, if the Skagosi are to be believed. The first action wilfully taken outside of the mother's body" Cat answered, reaching for her own idle embroidery – a seven pointed star on white, inside of which the names of her five children she would inscribe in a prayer for their safety and health – as she spoke. "But only the heart trees know all the things they do on Skagos. From Skagos to Sunspear, all believe different things. It is a choice that should be left to each and every woman on their own, I believe. To decide for themselves". She picked up her needle and began anew, so skilled and used to it that she needed not even look where she stitched, seeing with her fingertips instead. Margaery envied that particular skill. She had never been that good. "I could not, I think. Not if it was Ned's child". And the unspoken question hung in the air: _Could you?_

Honestly… she did not know. And that frightened her. "She's lost, and if I give her the choice now I think that she'd only be reduced to a panic. Perhaps when she has gathered herself. But in the event that she decides to bare the child to term" she breathed out hard, finally settling on a decision. "She will be my lady-in-waiting still. She will raise the child at Winterfell, and there the child will remain even if she returns to her father's court sometime in the future. For safety. She can be a playmate to my own children one day, and if it is a boy he can very well be a knight and sworn sword for House Stark. And if Lord Graceford disproves he go very well go choke on his precious sword, that wife-beating brute".

"If you believe that insulting one of your father's bannermen like that is prudent, Lady Margaery" Cat bent her head and kept at her stitching. "If you truly believe that…"

"One of my father's bannermen. Not mine. I will be up in Winterfell, with his bastard grandchild, and my father can very well deal with his frothing". She breathed out hard and stood from her seat, smoothing out her gown about her lap. "I will resume working on your convoluted lineage later, Cat. I will need to write letters and make arrangements. If you would excuse me?" And with Cat's nod she left the garden behind to head for the castle proper and the rookery in one of the upper towers.

The stone of the pathways through the gardens felt cold through the sole of her slippers, and as she went she felt the scabbard of Lionslayer bounce off her thigh. There was an art to fastening a sword to your girdle properly, she had discovered, and that was an art that she had far from mastered. She had asked Loras for lessons, or to at least show her a few things on how to use it properly, but her brother kept post-poning with an uncomfortable cast to his features, as if he thought that he would somehow hurt her when sparring, as if she was some fragile thing made out of ill-tempered pewter. It was silly, she thought. She would have to ask Garlan instead. He would have the same compunctions, but he, at least, would do whatever she asked.

" _I loved a maid as pale as winter, with moonglow in her hair_ ". She heard singing on the distance, and as she rounded a corner around the colonnade she saw her brother and some of his entourage sitting in the presence of a female minstrel. Bethany Redwyne was a patron of the arts, and so she filled the castle with paintings and sculptures and finery from all over Westeros, and she had taken singers and from all over the world to her side and into her service. One of the more stand-out exemplars was a Lysene singer called… Laena? Margaery was terrible with names. The troubadour was as fair as a Targaryen, with silver-gold hair in a braid that reached down to her waist and vivid violet eyes, yet she shirked dresses and gowns for britches and airy blouses. She had one of the best singing voices that Margaery had ever heard, though her lute-work and skills with the harp left a lot to be desired.

Margaery had learnt from her Grandmother that minstrels made the best spies. They were given free access to a Lord's holdings with nothing but a winning smile and a tune, if they were good enough. She was loath to trust them, but her youngest brother had no such reservations. But she put that out of her mind. Gods, if only she have had her archery to focus on or Grandmother to talk to. In only-

She stopped in the middle of a doorway, the guards in white and gold giving her odd looks as she did. She smirked to herself when she realised it. There was no doubt in her mind – only strategy and authority.

Perhaps being in charge of a Kingdom was not such a difficult thing after all.

* * *

 ** _The Rhymer_**

Rymund exalted in his new role as the King's personal bard. Luckily for him, his liege liked very much his lyrical lyrations and lamentations on the lassitudes and licentiousnesses of one's predestined lot.

Thus was not that night's performance, however. But he was feeling a little lazy.

" _And the Wolves in the Hills bowed to the Wolves of the North, and the banners flew proudly again_ " he sang as they sat around the campfire, resting in that ember glow that bathed them down to their very bones in warmth. Had Harren felt thus? Rymund wondered that as he stared up at the great melted towers of Harrenhal that stood titanous and defiant around them, a testament to the power of dragons and both the hubris and the determination of man. Against the night they were hardly visible, black on black but for the clear sky of stars, yet they were all around, ever present, and indomitable.

He wondered if the fires that had burnt the last King of the Rivers and Isles had felt warm and soothing first, if only for a fraction of the time it took for even the most sharp-eyed man to blink. The towers of man had melted before the Dragons, but now the Dragons were all gone and still the towers stood. A demented and twisted shadow of what they once were, perhaps, but still they stood. Perhaps one day they would be rebuilt, and the world of old come anew. The world that he saw in his dreams some times.

He let the last few notes of _Wolves in the Hills_ ring clear from his lute before he quieted the strings with his hand. He wondered, as the Young Wolf approached the campfire again from having been to the privy by the wall, if perhaps it was time for him to set off and away towards elsewhere. He exalted in his new role and his new station in life, and knew that there was a new life for him out there should he decide to lay down his lute and pick up the brewer's trade, but perhaps he could have more. The Young Wolf had promised five hundred gold dragons and a Lordship to whomsoever brought his sister to him, hale and in healthy wholeness, and Rymund admitted that such a large sum was tempting. Very tempting.

It all depended on what the Young Wolf did next, didn't it?

Perhaps he would even spy on him, like Kevan Lannister had paid him to. Handsomely, even. A full five gold dragons, with the promise of that thrice again if he brought back something worthwhile. All he had needed to do was make his way to the Young Wolf's camp, neglect to speak of the fact that he had learned his trade playing The Rains of Castamere in Lannisport for the mighty Tywin himself, send a few messages the way of King's Landing every now and then, and he'd be richer than his wildest poverty-stricken childhood dreams. But then the Young Wolf had smashed the Lannister army, and he had said "fuck yourself and farewell" to all of them. Five gold dragons were more than well enough for him, and twenty was far from enough to die for. He hadn't sent a single message to the Lannisters, and he had bought himself a lute with what Lord Kevan had given to him in his stupid yearning for a trustworthy spy.

He called his new lute Veria. He had bought it in Riverrun from a merchant from Lys bearing musical instruments from as far away as Slaver's Bay, having been trapped there by the war and made desperate to unload as much as his merchandise as he possibly could. Veria was parcel-silvered, made from soldier pine wood with ivory inlays, and its seven courses of catgut strings when plucked produced a fairly broad range of notes if tuned correctly by its silver turners at its head. As the Young Wolf approached he idly plucked at the strings, watching him and the two other people sitting by that camp fire some ways off.

He was uncertain when it came to Jon Snow. Or, rather, Jon Stark as it was now. The man was entirely too sombre. Verily, that verisimilitude of voracious vagrancy which the winter prince had vowed himself to was very much a vagabond's verity. In all veracity, Rymund found it very vexing. Verdantly vexing, and very much so.

Whatfor was he so very despondent? Doom and gloom inked always to his brow, the furrows on his face beacons of sullenness to guide his way t'wards the furthest celestial reaches of melancholic stars. Always, ever throughout the days and the evenings, to his face a frown affixed, furious and foreboding in afearing foresight, as if he foresaw naught but fury and famine in the future of his family. Rymund thought it foolish. Foppish.

And fucking idiotic. A man should smile, and often. Life was much too grim as it was already.

"Your Grace" the boy sitting by Jon Stark's side at the fire rose at the King's arrival, but he lifted a hand and urged the boy to stay and not bow. The lad was Edric Dayne, the Boy Lord of Starfall and the Torrentine, once squire to Berric Dondarrion and now sword carrier to the King in the North. His comrade Gendry was off somewhere, doing something. Rymund did not care. He had no care in the world for some blacksmith-made-knight-made-rider for the King in the North. He was no doubt of little consequence to the greater story as a whole. And it wat that grander story that interested Rymund.

He would one day compose an epic poem about the Young Wolf. He did not much care if it was a tragedy, comedy or history piece at this point, but he would. And he would have much gladness doing it. Gods, he had never had so much fun in his life as he was by the Northerners' sides.

The Young Wolf reached up to his head and lifted the bronze and iron crown off of his hair. "I should have it padded. It would be making my hair green if it wasn't for how it rusted". The Young Wolf handed it off to his squire, who carefully wrapped it in a soft pelt taken from some manner of ungodly huge rabbit. "Every time it feels like it lightens it suddenly doubles in weight" he muttered and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Edric, go to your quarters. I'll sleep out here, under the stars. We'll wake you in the morning".

"I-" the boy looked like he was about to protest, but the two Stark brothers shared a look and the boy bowed and said "your Grace" before he did as he was bid. Obedient sort. And Rymund appreciated it. Lords and kings thought of minstrels and bards like scenery, he had discovered, fading into the background of their chambers as they schemed and played at politics. He kept idly plucking at his lute as King Stark sank down to sit on the quilts laid out around the fire beside his brother.

"He's a good lad" he noted, wryly looking after that bright-haired boy as he trundled tiredly off towards his quarters in the tower, leaving the Northerners and their stupidly thick skin to weather the winter weather. "And he's a little Lord. It will be good to have friends and allies in Dorne. And in the Reach. Did you know that Robar asked me permission to marry? As if he needed my leave to do so. I might be his master but I am not his rightful liege".

He was a good man, the King in the North. He had said that the weather was warm and the wounded and weak too many, and thus taken to sleeping outside of Harrenhal's chambers to leave his surgeons and most of his Maesters to take the misfortunate to the rooms in the ruined castle, sheltered from wind and cold. Rymund supposed that there were worse Lords he could have been serving. And he had been given an inn and land, after all – if that meant anything. Vows were made easily in war, and broken just as easily in peacetime.

As the two brothers spoke Rymund, still idly plucking at the strings of his sweet Veria, looked past the campfire and the resting warriors towards the closest wall of the ruined tower and the shape huddled there. Maester Ebbert had, according to Greatjon at least, broken one of his Maester's vows by keeping another, and he seemed to be tormented by it. He was sitting by his leather tablet, the parchment before him blank and unmarked, the quill in his trembling fingers coated in long-since dried ink as he stared down on his hands. They were red, his hands and his lower arms where they jutted from the sleeves of his blood-splattered grey robe. Bright red and sore, as if he had been scrubbing them mercilessly, which he had. But going by his haunted look it had made no difference. He still saw red there, red of a different kind.

 _Good_ , Rymund thought. _Perhaps now he can be brave_. Still, one murdered old man did not make a man a fighter. "Roren's been badgering me to go out onto the Gods' Eye, to the Isle of Faces" the Young Wolf spoke quietly onto his brother. "He keeps saying that it is the place from his dreams. He says that it has to be. He thinks that the Green Men will have the answers that he seeks".

"Does he know?" came the White Wolf's voice in reply, questioning. "About Ghost and Grey Wind, I mean. Does he know what we can do? Have you told him?"

"No – only you and I know. The Tyrells know more about it than they let on, Willas especially, but as far as I know they've kept their mouths shut about it". He reached down to his wineskin and sipped of the liquid therein, red and western on his tongue. The triumph made it all the sweeter, Rymund deduced. "Not that it has stopped the bloody rumours. They all say it already. 'Warg', I hear them whisper. The Riverlanders ignore it or try to refute it, but the Northerners don't. Most even seem to think it's a good thing". He paused, chewing a little at his lip before he went on. "When was your first time?"

"When I first walked in Ghost's skin?" Jon clarified, and the Young Wolf nodded. "North of the Wall. It happened once clearly, though a couple of times I did it by accident without even realising it. It's always been there, I think. In the back of my mind. The back of my head. These fey quiet…"

"Whispers?" Jon nodded, thankful for his brother finding the right word for him. "I hear them too. The first time it happened for me was the Battle at Pinkmaiden. I shot back into my own body when Grey Wind killed a Lannister sentry. It is terrifying, to feel the blood run down your throat and cover your lips and find- and find…"

"And find that you crave it, hunger for it" Jon expounded, the brothers two taking comfort in a shared but still horrid experience. Rymund, on the other hand, was listening intently. This he found very interesting. He knew that the mere suspicion of being a warg let to kinslaying and parents setting their children out in the woods to die in the South, but the stories of living wargs, of men who could take the shapes of beasts. He placed little importance in superstition, though he did trust the tales a great deal. The greatest of stories were the ones filled with monsters. "Sometimes it's hard to tell it apart" Jon then said. "Where the man ends and the wolf begins. Maybe we should follow Roren to the Isle. The Green Men live there, tending to the Weirwoods. They might know something about the Gods. And about shapeshifting".

"Aye" The Young Wolf nodded, blue eyes searching for dreams in the flames as he stared into the campfire. "Tomorrow we'll have answers, Jon. Tomorrow we go to the Isle of Faces". He sighed and rubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand. "I just hope that Arya is safe".

* * *

 ** _Arya_**

"It's called Needle" she told the Hound as she exited the Saltpans Inn after him, using a piece of red cloth to wipe down her sword and clean it of blood.

Needle. She loved that sword. Jon had given it to her, before the world had gone to shite. That Lannister deserter had carried it, and now he was dead. His name had been Polliver, and he had killed Lommy. Now his name was nothing. Perhaps "corpse".

Another name off her list. One name less to say at night.

"Needle?" Sandor Clegane was a huge man, hideously burned over one side of his face, and he was as bad company as he was ugly. She had learned that since the day he had accompanied her from the Hollow Hill, saying that he would take her to her aunt Lysa in the Vale and turn her in for a Lady's ransom. He snorted at her words and lifted the wineskin he had taken from one of the now dead men in the tavern to his lips, drinking deeply. He sighed in relief once he had lowered it, luxuriating in the taste of good wine. "Of course you named your sword".

Arya looked up at him as she hurried up to his side as they fetched Stranger, his large and ill-tempered horse, and turned down the empty streets towards the harbour and the sole ship anchored there. It was a Braavosi galley, with a purple hull and purple sails and gold trimming around the figurehead and the front of the bow, and they thought that perhaps, only perhaps, they could convince the captain of it to make a stop in Gulltown. The Hound had a purse full of silver, taken from the Lannister deserters, for that express purpose. "Lots of people name their swords"

"Lots of cunts" Clegane answered her remark in what was half a growl as they walked down the street with Stranger in tow, and she glowered at his back. The Hound. Gregor Clegane. Joffrey's disobedient dog. She put Needle inside her belt at her hip and fingered the blade's handle.

"I hate you" she muttered the Hound's way, and meant it truly. He had killed Mycah, on Joffrey's orders, back when he had been a good dog and done as he was told. Sansa had not believed her, but she had known always that Joffrey was a lying bastard. Sansa had lied, had been his pretty little doll like she had wanted. Yet…

She did not hate her sister. She had heard Sansa's screams when Ilyn Peyne cut off Father's head. Screeching, horrified, shrill like the shattering of glass. Sansa had a pretty singing voice. When they were very little Sansa had used to sing to her as they lay huddled in the same bed. Arya had not even known that she could sound like that, so broken and full of fear and shame and shock as she heard it through the silence that followed the falling of the sword but before Sansa fainted. Sometimes she could still hear it.

Had that cry been what marked the breaking of Sansa's precious little world? When the fates finally crushed her dreams of noble knights and pretty little ladies in pretty little dresses?

 _Good_ , she thought sadly. _Good_. She did not want Sansa heartbroken and hurt, but winter was coming.

 _The winters are hard, but the Starks will endure. We always have_. And Sansa needed to act like a Stark. Now, more than ever. Still Arya would have traded almost anything to have Father back by her side. If only she could turn back time, to the days before Fat Robert came to Winterfell, before everything had gone to shite. Before Father died, Sansa lied and Bran fell-

A horn blast, trumpeting out of the sparse woodlands past Saltpans outermost western houses, roused her from her thoughts, and she and the Hound both spun around to see horsemen thundering out of the trees and down the road, torches and swords and axes held high in their hands, wild cries booming out from their lips. "Fuck!" Clegane spat. "Deserters! Shit – there are no gory and pathetic cunts in the whole fucking world! They'll fuck us if we stay here!"

She neglected to mention to him that he was as much a deserter as they were. She'd gloat in that in all due time.

They had no luck at the Braavosi galleas that lay in port, the Titan's Daughter, for a swarm of people stood around it, a crowd begging and pleading to be let aboard and carried off into safety as the ropes were cut and the ship was made ready to sail. The captain of the ship, a man in opulent clothes and a friendly but frightened face, let none through. "We go only to Braavos" he told Arya where she had slinked through the crowd where Clegane struggled, much smaller and faster than him. Perhaps, she had thought, she could escape him. But still the captain would not let her through, no matter how she assured him that they had silver.

She gazed over her shoulder, at the men there now pouring out of the woods – Lannister deserters and mercenaries all – some of which she recognised as former members of the Brave Companions. She heard one of them shout, in the far distance. "Find her! Find the Stark bitch!" They were after her.

How? Why? She was being hunted, and she knew not why. There was no way out, no way home. Except for on that ship, and it only went to Braavos. _Braavos_.

She wasn't getting on that ship. Just like all the other people at the docks she would stay there and die to the rampaging raiders. She would never see her family again that way. And she realised what she had to do. "Wait!" she called out and reached into her pocket, pulling out a silver coin, holding it in the air, and the nervous captain turned his look to her, eyes wide and fearful in realisation. "Valar Morghulis" she said, as Jaquen H'gar had told her to. "Valar Morghulis!" The words she had not known, had not understood but come to understand, the words she had whispered into the ear of a Harrenhal guard as she slit his throat. _Valar morghulis._

 _All men must die_.

And the entire countenance of the Braavosi captain changed as he reached out and took the coin from her on dainty fingers. He bowed towards her, suddenly subservient and eager to please but also even more fearful than before. " _Valar dohaeris_ " he said and stepped aside, showing her to the ship and the gangplank, gesturing to his men to caste loose and set sail for Braavos. Arya glanced over her shoulder at the slaughter of Saltpans and beyond, to the woods and the hills, and beyond, to Robb and her family. "I am Ternesio Terys" he informed her as he led her by the arm he lay around her back. "Your friend stays here. Only you must come. Please remember-"

"Take your hand off of her, you Braavosi fuck!" a roar burst in from behind them, the crowd breaking before that giant man in heavy armour, and Arya cursed inwardly at his persistence in not dying as the Hound seized her by the other arm and tore her away from the captain and the ship. "This one is my ransom! I go with her, or not at all!" At Terys's glare the Hound knew which it would be, and so began to pull Arya with him, away.

"Let go of me!" Arya shouted and scratched at the Hound's gauntlets, unable to draw Needle from its sheath as he pulled her along, back out of the dispersing crowd, but The Captain and five men from his crew ran after them, visibly angered, their willingness to now take her with them and fight Clegane for her passage strange to even her.

"She is coming with us" the Captain warned, and Arya tore at the arm dragging her away from her salvation, but Clegane's grip was like iron and his fingers were unyielding.

"The fuck she is" the Hound answered and lifted her up into the saddle of his great black horse, glaring all the while at the Captain of the Titan's Daughter. Arya looked up at him too – and stopped struggling. Shadows moved about his face, and it seemed to change even though it didn't. She wasn't taken aback in the slightest, but Sander certainly was. "The fuck-?!" he shouted as he lifted his sword.

"The Faceless Men want her. She is coming with us". And then there were knives. Knives everywhere. Captain Terys's face shimmered and flickered, images of demons and dragons spewing fire dancing before his face. Arya could see through the visions, like one could spot a gold coin at the bottom of a pewter cup, as she took the reins of Stranger and urged him away from the men, but Clegane seemed unable to. He cried like Sansa would have when seeing a rat, swinging his sword wildly at the approaching crewmen of that purple galleas. The face of the Captain flickered the most, though the crewmen did as well, their noses and their eyes and their lips and ears changing only, but to the Hound it seemed to seem a full and impossible transformation.

"Back!" he roared and swung his blade in a vicious arch, cleaving deep into the neck of a crewman with Tyroshi features that blinked out of existence to leave him clean-shaven and pale when he fell dead to the ground. Still they charged at him, and a burst of fire jetted from the Captain's mouth – not real fire, yet the Hound cried like it burnt. "Back! Away! Fuck you all, away with you!"

"It's a trick!" Arya shouted at him, and they faltered around him, stepping back and away from his gleaming sword. "A trick! It's not their real faces! None of it is real!" The Hound, scrambling backwards, glanced at her and saw her certainty, to which he nodded with a shudder then looked up. He stepped forth and ran his gauntleted fist into a crewman's scaled face, and the grey scale scars vanished in a blink to leave smooth cheeks and a boyish smile now crushed. "See?! It's just a trick!"

"Fucking sorcery!" The Hound growled, and spat out a tirade of curses as the quarrels, fired from crossbowmen aboard the galleas, began to whish about his head. He rushed towards Stranger, haltered only when a barbed quarrel struck him through the thigh and another dug into his side, a third lancing into his shoulder, but he crawled up into the saddle behind Arya who then urged Stranger forwards and away. "Fucking sorcery" the wounded Hound snarled and grunted at his wounds. "Fucking Faceless Men. Fucking Baratheons. Fucking Lannisters. Fucking Starks!" Behind them she heard how the Captain ordered the men to ceasefire, in the common tongue no less, that they did not want to kill their precious cargo. Why?

"What was that, back there, the things that they did?" she wondered, panting as she urged the galloping Stranger around a corner and down a street, away from the plundering bandits encroaching on their position and the harbour. "And why did they want me?!" What had giving that coin really meant? What hadn't Jaquen H'gar told her?

"Go back and ask them if you want to know, you stupid bitch!" Clegane groaned, baring his teeth against the pain that raked him. "It burns! Burns like fucking fire! Fucking assassins and their fucking poisons! Get us away from this fucking shithole-!" Stranger rounded a corner and they came out onto a burning, harrowed street, and there, as they came face-to-face with a band of five reavers, the Hound quieted. Arya recognised the men, and above all else she recognised their leader. Of course, it was easy to recognise a man without a nose.

"There they are!" Rorge was an accursed, cruel, hideous man, dangerous and murderous, and Arya had met him for the first time when he had been sitting in the same barred wheelhouse as Biter and Jaquen H'gar. He had shared a cell with the two in the black dungeons far below the Red Keep in King's Landing. Perhaps she should have known that Jaquen was just as much a monster as those two from merely that. And now he seemed to be leading the charge of these few deserters, atop his horse and in his barbed armour, alongside a dark Dornishman called Timeon, an impossibly hairy Ibbenese called Togg Joth, and Shagwell, the monster in a jester's motley. Him Arya hated most of all. She had barely recognised that before Stranger came to an abrupt stop and pranced with an angry whinny.

They both tumbled from the saddle, Arya from one way and the Hound the other, and while the Hound groaned and lay flat on his back, clutching at the quarrels protruding from his body, Arya saw the last of the reavers – a Dothraki archer with a torch in his hand, having been busy setting fire to a Cobbler's shop when they had rode by. Grinning and laughing that man, Iggo she recalled his name from Harrenhal, threw the torch through one of the upper stories of that building before he shouldered his bow and drew a savagely curved arakh from his hip, his long black braid slick with oil against his back.

"You were supposed to go to Braavos, stick girl" Rorge licked his lips as he too dismounted, along with his men, the four of them approaching the Hound who was struggling onto his knees while Iggo swaggered towards Arya. "We were supposed to make sure that happened. Drive you t'wards the ship. Now we'll just have to take you to Braavos ourselves". He lifted his axe and his shield and grinned at her. She hated him too. He was on her list. "Might as well have some fun while-"

He said no more after that. With a bellowed curse insulting their collective ancestry the Hound rose and slashed upwards, taking the four men by surprise, severing three fingers off of Shagwell's hand. Arya, taking advantage of the sudden surprise, drew Needle from her hip and whirled about like Syrio had taught her, stabbing Iggo through the heart before she withdrew the she danced back and around, away from the scuffle now going on before the cobbler's store that burned like a torch against the dying of the day in Saltpans, and the skies grew ever greyer above their heads.

Clegane has once said that he would teach her how to kill. Properly, he said. And he had been most instructive. Still, he was on her list, and so she had no inclination to help him where she stood by Iggo's cooling corpse while he fought like a man possessed. He limped, grunted, his face contorted with pain all the while from the quarrels and the poison he had suspected had coated the steel tips. Still he was a better fighter than the rest of all of them, and he clove Shagwell near in half when the mad jester charged him, though the flails the fool swung above his head streaked close by his face and made deep furrows there, bleeding in his skin.

Togg Joth and Timeon, one with a large double-sided axe and the other with a Dornish fighting spear, came at him as one, though even that was hardly enough, for he in blinding speed blocked blows from either before Timeon kicked dust off the road into his eyes. Togg's axe fell – and stuck in Clegane's armour. He cleaved its haft with a beck-edge slash before he cleaved Togg's head down to the teeth with the front edge. And when Timeon came at him for the last time he knocked the speartip aside and ran him through. But the sword stuck in the Dornishman's ribs and spine and was dragged from his hands before Rorge took his turn.

Normally the Hound was a little larger and a lot stronger than that noseless man who had become a member of the Brave Companions, all whom she had come to be familiar with during her time spent as Tywin Lannister's cup-bearer at Harrenhal, but now was not a normal time. He was wounded savagely, weighed down and weary, and Rorge was fresh and out for blood, swinging widely with his axe. They scuffled, all but wrestled, Celgane getting within the reach of Rorge's axe before the nose-less man kicked him away. Clegane stumbled backwards and came onto the creaking, bulging, burning wall of the cobbler's store with a thud. Above him the building groaned dangerously.

"You fucking cunt of a-!" the Hound roared, spittle flying from his lips, before the toppling remains of the burning cobbler's shop crashed down on him and drowned out the rest of his words in a mighty tumble. And he was gone, out of sight. Rorge, laughing as the dust settled and the rubble pouring out around his feet, mucus bursting from his nose-hole with every exhale, turned around to face Aya – who had taken up Iggo's bow and nocked a black arrow from his quiver to the string. The bow was far different from what she was used to. The draw weight was much heavier than that of an ordinary shortbow, the limbs made out of laminated bone and horn fixed and glued together instead of wood, the string out of sinew and horsehair, but it was still a bow. She knew how to use bows.

"I'll fuck you bloody! I'll rape you before I give you to the Faceless Men!" Rorge lifted his shield and ran at her, almost stumbling over the bodies of his fallen companions but managed to stand straight, and she stared at him as he came closer. _Don't hold. Your eye knows where it wants the arrow to go_. Anguy. _Remember_. _Stick'em with the pointy end_. Jon. _All men are made of water. If you pierce them, the water leaks out and they die_. Syrio.

 _What do we say to death?_ "Not today" Arya said as she, in one smooth and almost soft motion, lifted her bow, pulled the arrow to anchor beneath her chin and released. A wind pulled at her hair. She heard a far distant she-wolf's howl on it.

And Rorge crashed to the ground, her arrow jutting from that ugly hole in his face where his nose had once been. She lowered her bow, wincing at the pain on her forearm from where the bowstring had slapped against her skin on the reverb, and walked over to him, using all her strength to lift him over onto his back. The arrow had struck deep into his head, through the front of his skull, but not all through and so she pulled it out and wiped his blood and brains and mucus off the tip by the fabric of his cloak. She cast a look over at the ruins of the cobbler's shop and cocked her head to the side.

Two more names off her list. _Huh_. She thought that she would have been happier about that, but she just felt numb. Numb all over. It was difficult to feel anything anymore. Perhaps if she got back to Robb, to Jon, to Mother, she'd learn how to smile again.

She wasted little more time. Saltpans and her way to Braavos were dead around her, along with most of the ones that had been chasing her. And the ones who had said that they were taking her to safety. They had been using her. All of them. They had been using her to get wealth or whatever it was the Jaquen H'gar had wanted from her. These men… they could change their faces, and they worshiped Death. Perhaps death was the only actual God in the world, and all the rest was just magic and mummery, like Dondarrion's burning sword or the time Thoros had brought him back to life.

Like how she could hear Nymeria howl in her sleep, and run free and hunt men in her beloved Direwolf's skin. Magic… magic was not some strange thing. She could see past all the awe and fear.

Magic was just a different kind of sword.

She took the quiver full of arrows off of Iggo's back and strapped it to her own. She got the knives off of the others and hung them from her belt. She scoured for what food, cloaks, maps and drink she could find and shoved it all into Stranger's saddlebags. And then, with one last look at the smoking ruins of the cobbler's shop, she mounted that angry beast and turned him around, heading for the woods and away from the distant pillaging of Saltpans. The men there were looking for her, if they had ridden for Rorge. But with a head's start she'd make it to Riverrun long before they caught up with her.

Urging her horse forward she vanished into the woods, hearing the howling still in her mind.

* * *

END

* * *

A/N: I've been spelling Joffrey wrong for a hundred thousand words now. By Balder's baldspot, that is aggravating.

This chapter was hard to get out. I'm just on the precipice of better things in this story, so it took a lot of effort not to jump right to that and ignore all this set-up. But I took my time instead, and I hope that shows at least a little. Still, I am sorry for the delay. Now, on to some notes:

Until someone tells me otherwise, I will presume that Jon is a little younger than Robb. Perhaps just a little, not even a full year, but just enough to make a difference to two young boys who grew up competing with each other in almost all things.

The Maester oaths is something that I've made up myself. For drama's sake, mostly, but I've tried to keep it in line with what is written about Maesters in the books. It will pay off a lot later on, so please don't hate on it just yet. It's quite worthy of hating on, but be patient with me, please.

The Hound was cursing all the time because… because Arya brings out the worst in him? I dunno, I don't like writing him. Also, Rorge is a little more eloquent and prone to rape in my story than in cannon. But, I mean, come on. No nose? That means supervillain in most fantasy stories.

Also, the Hound is not dead. Not yet. Just like I believe that he's not dead in the books. But I do believe that he is dead, after a fashion, too. It's a whole theory thing, like with the Braavosi and the Faceless Men being after Arya. That, too, will be answered. All in good time.

I hope that you've enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	11. Returning

Chapter Eleven – Returning

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

On the far distant wind Robb heard the howling of a she-wolf, and he looked up from the bowl of green paste in his hands. Glaring he stared out over the waters of the Gods' Eye, towards the east and away from the setting sun, and absently he noticed that both Grey Wind, Ghost and Jon looked with him. None of the others reacted.

Again. It was one of those shapeshifter things, again. It had to be. Unknown, always unknown, he had not an inkling of how it worked or what it was. _But perhaps this place can provide answers_. "Your Grace?" Robar Royce asked of him, and he shook his head to clear it and turned back to face his loyal followers around the campfire. "Your Grace? Is anything amiss?"

"It's nothing, Royce" Robb shook his head and cast a glance around the campfire they had set in the middle of a clearing, at the few people that he had brought with him to meet the Green Men. It was said that the winds and the waves turned away all who would come to the Isle of Faces, on the middle of the Gods' Eye, pilgrims and explorers alike, would be turned away by wind and sail, but in two small boats Robb had noticed no such things. It had supposed to be one boat only, but Grey Wind and Ghost had insisted on coming along – for some reason. Now the two lay huddled together in the grey shade of one of the thousands of Weirwoods that lay around the island. They were beyond number all around them, their crowns filled with red leaves that looked almost like hands, and their faces… their faces were all different. Old men, women, children, bearded or shaven or stern or glad, all around one tree amongst the myriad. "You were saying?"

"That message you had sent to Joffrey after Harroway, your Grace" he prodded uncertainly, Lyra Mormont glancing at him as she ate her own bowl of green paste beside him. To the left of Robb and Jon sat Rymund and Maester Ebbert, and beside young Edric Dayne on their right sat Roren Bulwer, glowering all around them with his bloodshot, tired eyes. Not a one of them wore armour but Royce, who wore his pauldrons, his greeves and his bronze gauntlets. If the stories had been true and their boats turned over, swimming was easier without armour on. Robb did not like being on that lone island, strange and foreboding without armour. He could feel… something. Something in the ground beneath his feet. Something was watching them. Not even in the godswood of Winterfell he had felt so _small_.

"Aye, it's like prodding a sleeping bear and expecting it to be your friend when it wakes up" Lyra Mormont said as she, with a face of profound disgust, scraped the past they had been provided off her teeth. Robb too picked at it. It was a green, thick paste of a slurry, made of onions and shallots and garlic and pine oil, spiced with thyme and rosemary and large grains of salt. The very taste of it lay thick against his tongue and brought tears to his eyes.

"It's supposed to" he coughed. There was something else in it too. It was pieces, pieces of something white and earthy, something that stuck in his throat, something they had to wash down with the elderflower wine the attending children. But he was starved after an entire day on the Isle of Faces without food, and so were the others, so he ate of it anyway. Edric, on account of his weak stomach, was the only one who didn't eat. He had been sick on his way over the lake, just like Jon had though much worse. At least the two were brothers in their misery, and had each other to cling to and lean on. Robb had been considerate enough not to laugh. Lyra and Ghost hadn't been, though Ghost did it silently, as always.

Only Grey Wind noted Pale Brother's amusement, but he and Robb blended together so easily now. It was hardly an effort anymore to see from his eyes and speak to him in his thoughts.

"If Joffrey hurts Sansa, the same will be done to all the Lannister prisoners we have a thousandfold again" Jon said for him, idly patting him on the back while Robb sipped of that queer, weird wine. It was like iron on his tongue, and it even had the look of sanguine red, yet it tasted of flowers and acorns, earthy and rich. "He will not hurt her – he cannot. We have seen to that. We want him angry. We want to send his forces out to die on our pikes in his rage".

"The Southron's military strength relies on knights" Robb finally got his mouth cleared of that prickly taste, though now it was replaced by an iron aftertaste that made him think of walking in Grey Wind's skin and fighting Lannister men. "Short spear formations, close ranks, lightly armoured footmen, crossbowmen – their armies are cumbersome and slow and not nearly as effective as they think. War is fought by marching and won by speed and shrewdness". They gave him odd looks, uncomprehending, and inwardly he sighed. It felt obvious to him, but none of them got it. It was difficult to explain, but he wanted them to understand. Well, if they did not, his enemies most likely did not either. "Rymund – play something to fill the silence, will you?"

"Gladly, your Grace" the Riverlander seized his lute closer and began to softly pluck at the strings with his fingers. " _I loved a maid as fair as summer_ " he began, voice quivering with emotion as the sunlight faded around them and shadows began to move through the trees " _with sunlight in her hair_ ". And as he sang _Seasons of my Love_ Robb saw them around him.

It was odd. " _I loved a maid as red as autumn, with sunset in her hair_ ". There were stories of the Green Men, of travellers returning from the Isle of Faces with legends of men with skin of living green and horns protruding from their brows, but no such men had been seen. On the shore they had been greeted by a young child, dressed in whispy rags and undeterminable gender and with a mop of red-blonde hair, calling himself, herself, itself, Birch. It had led them to the glade, telling them that men in red had tried to cross the lake from the Battle at Harrenhal but "lost their way". Its brothers and sisters, a few of them, brought them bowls and goblets of wine and told them to wait. The Green Men would come, they said. All questions would be answered if they only ate and waited.

And there they were, appearing once again as if grown from the earth or as if they had stepped out of the trees, living shadows come to listen to the songs of men. " _I loved a maid as white as winter, with moonglow in her hair_ ". A dozen of them, maybe two, maybe more, their eyes shining in the penumbral twilight from out among the trees as the stars, one by one, came into sight overhead, and it was odd, all so very odd, for nightfall was not supposed to come for another long while. Hours at the very least. No, something was different, for the darkness was falling around them and the campfire before them grew bolder and stronger, the fire blazing brighter.

In the back of his mind he felt Grey Wind drift off into something that was… that was like sleep, yet not. Distant that Direwolf became to his mind, as if something was intruding on what bound them together like a tower coming between oneself and the summer sunlight, drenching one's body in shadow and darkness. " _I loved a maid as sweet as spring, with flowers in her hair_ ". Where there more eyes in the woods now? He couldn't tell. He felt that iron taste on his lips and that deep, earthy, rotten paste clog at his throat, and the eyes in the forest, impossible to tell apart from the eyes of the children and the eyes of the Weirwoods themselves, began to glow like stars, white and green and red and winter blue.

" _And I loved_ -" Rymund went to sing on, but his words were slurred, his hands drifting away from the neck and body of his lute to fall to his side. "I loved-" but he said no more, as he slumped down, though almost all of the others seemed to not notice – or not care.

"Master Rymund!" Edric was alone in jumping to his feet, eyes darting all about them as he stood terrified. "Ser Royce! Lord Stark! Lady Mormont! Your Grace!" He approached Robb though the darkness was thickening, and there was a distant whisper, a whisper past Grey Wind's presence, something strange, something that he had to listen to. "Your Grace! Rouse yourself! Do not subcome! Nothing-!" Why was he shouting and shaking him by the shoulders? There was no reason. No reason that was important, anyway. All that mattered was the stars and that taste in his mouth and him reaching through the darkness to find that –

Things… things were not as they seemed. "Sometimes darkness can show you the light, young Stark". From the Weirwood scenery a solemn form intruded, a tall and gaunt man, green robes pulled close about his body to cover all of him but his hands, hands inked and spotted with green, a crown of horns and thorns and thistles on his head and a mask carved from rough oak, still clad wholly in bark, before his face. Only his eyes could be seen through that mask – green, burning green, streaked through with blood red and winter blue in a swirling maelstrom pattern.

Edric noticed how Robb looked up at that shadow of a man who approached their campfire, and the boy Lord of Starfall turned around to see too – but his reaction was different from the others'. While Ebbert and Rymund and Jon looked confused and Roren looked relieved Edric was afraid. Very, very afraid. He trembled where he stood, mouth falling open, and he scrambled backwards and away.

The man in green raised his hand the way of Edric, and suddenly he stood still. "Sleep, Starchild" the Green Man's voice was soft and deep, like the burrows of the deep world, hidden from the light of the sun and the coming of the kingdoms of man. "Sleep deeply, and forget my true visage". Edric's eyes slid to the back of his head and he slumped to the grassy forest floor, falling into a torpor-like rest within mere moments. That done the Green Man lowered his hand and folded his robes about him as he sat down in the place that the boy lord had vacated, his robes rising up just a little to show his gnarled and twisted feet, hard and dark like the hooves of an old horse, bare within his sandals. "You sought to speak with me, Robb Stark" he spoked aloud. "We have been waiting for your coming for centuries. When Bat mingles with Direwolf powerful blood is made".

"I-" Robb shook his head and rubbed at his eyes. They hurt, head and eyes both, and there were questions he wanted to ask but could not ask. He would not let himself. "I heard the stories. You are supposed to be here. Many of you. But there are only children here, and you. Where are all the others?"

"It has been a long time since new blood came into our brotherhood" the Green Man spoke in reply, his voice twisting and distorting itself on the night air. "To open ourselves to the Old Power, what little of it remained, we had to" he paused, and Robb had the feeling that there was so little he understood "change ourselves. Many years have passed, and few of us can walk like men anymore. The transformations have progressed beyond mobility. Still we listen, still we wait, still we tend to the Heart's Trees side by side with the Children". Robb thought there was something off, something strange, but he said nothing of the sort. "Few of us have the Blood. None of us had the Green in us before the Trees gave it to us. Which is why your family, the one dead, the one living and the one yet to live, is so important. Especially the one yet to live".

"What?" He did not understand, and there was something on the edge of sound, a whisper on the winds, that sapped his strength and brought the pains to his head and the agony to his eyes. "I- I don't… where are the Greenseers?"

"There is only one Greenseer living in this world that has the blood of man" the Green answered his question, a very different question than the one he had intended to ask. "And only one, perhaps two, with the potential to become Greenseers. To listen to the Songs within the Heart's Trees and see the world and the ages unfurl in the Song of the red leaves – it is a thing like your bond with Grey Wind, young Stark, but with the Trees themselves. You will never have it. You have only traces of Green in your blood. But like your father, and his father before him, you may pass it on. And if you join the Wolfsblood with the blood of the High Tower, the blood of Dragons traced so faintly in it, and the blood of the Eater of Infants, the Blood of the Old One, the First One" he paused, and Robb had the feeling he was smiling. He also had a sense that such was not a good thing. Not at all.

"Tell me of the Wolfsblood" Robb asked, glancing aside at his companions. None of them were looking at him or even listening, their lips and hands and eyes moving on their own as they sat facing the Green Man, as if they were all of them having their own conversations that none of the others could hear. Robb too, yet somehow it seemed… unimportant. Yes, unimportant. There were questions that needed to be asked. With the air and the leaves whispering around him, why would he care about them? The whispers said that it was unimportant. Why should he not believe the whispers in his mind? They were _his_ thoughts, after all… weren't they? "Sometimes I enter my Direwolf's mind. I become as if one with him. What powers makes me do that? What foul sorcery is it?"

"The power is nothing but your own, Robb Stark" The Green Man told him softly, his voice a whisper on the wind, a single whisper amongst thousands. "It is in you. It is in your blood. It has been in you ever since before the First of your line buried your people in stone instead of earth to keep you from the roots of the Heart's Trees. A Green trace of the Old Powers. A shade of green, a shadow of the world as it once was".

"Your words are riddles" Robb spat at him, anger burning in his chest, in his blood, in the part of him that was red and burning and alive. "Speak plainly! What is this?" The voices were growing louder, louder and ever louder, a crowd of singers moving through his mind with the swaying of the Weirwood leaves above him. "What magic is this?"

"Magic it is, young Stark" the Green Man answered, amused by his anger and his defiance and his mistrust, amused by his scepticism. "A power that is wholly yours. Skinchanging, skinwalking… warging. You, young Stark, have to be the weakest Skinchanger that I have ever come across in all my years". The Green Man chuckled, and his mirth was the sound of wood creaking in the storm, of trees twisting in on themselves and of ice breaking. "You can enter the mind of a creature you have bonded, that much is certain. Yet you cannot bond easily, almost not at all. And even when you part your own body you cannot move, you cannot act. You can only watch and listen, and sometimes speak. The weakest sorcery I have ever seen".

"How do you know this?" Robb demanded, but his head tumbled and turned, the ground heaving beneath his feet, and he put his face in his hands, the paste he had been fed burning in his stomach. "Have- have you poisoned me?!"

"I have opened your eyes, little king, because you would not listen to the warning that we sent you" the Green Man replied, the shadows dancing in grass around him, faces shimmering in the trunks of the Weirwood trees, moving in the same song that raged through Robb's head. "The Red Star burns in the sky above you, and still you do not see. The Red light brings life to that which never dies. It wakes the sleepers. The Old Powers are returning. The Others are not your real enemy. There are no enemies. No enemies, no heroes, no victory. With the blood of your Gods I have opened your eyes".

"The Others?" Robb choked. "Are… the White Shadows? The Others?"

"Would you fight them, simply because you think that they are not like you, those who were once your kin, those whose blood you have in your veins?" the Green Man asked, sorrow on his voice. "Would you fight them, simply because they take back what is rightfully theirs, what you swore you would let them have? Would you fight them, simply because stories tell you that they are evil? Would you fight them, simply because those blinded by the fire tell you to?"

Robb wanted to ask something else, something important, and so he made to rise, but he stumbled and fell, no strength left in his legs to carry him upright. He crashed into the ground and landed on his side, his cup of blood-red elderwine tumbling from his hand. Jon was right in front of him, lying on his side, mouth and eyes opened in silent fear for his life.

"He is much stronger than you, with the Old Powers at least" the Green Man's voice boomed through his head amongst the cacophony of singing children inside his head, put there by the trees around him. "All of them are. Your siblings are more powerful than you, all of them. Even this White Wolf in black. Even the girl with the shifting face. Even the caged little bird with her sweet, enchanting songs. And especially the broken pup wearing the stone chain. He is the strongest in the Old Powers to have walked this world in a thousand years. He will save you from the cold, if you let him. But it is you who will lead them".

The Green Man smiled. It was a terrible thing to behold. "Robb Stark. The King in the North. _The King Who Brought Magic Back_ ".

And then Robb heard no more, nothing more than the _Song._

 _And he flew._

 _The gardens were warm around him, Highgarden towering above her yet casting no shadow over her, and hand in hand with her brothers she walked the white pathways between the colonnade and smelled the golden summer roses._

 _The godswood loomed quiet and imposing around him, Winterfell's towering holdfasts standing tall like the giants that had built them around her, and she walked alone across the soft moss and under the red leaves overhead and smelled the blue winter roses._

 _The forest was silent about him as she walked it, wild and vast and untouched by the hands of men, men who had reduced the Southron lands to a shadow of what they once were, and as she skipped and sang roses, red as smouldering coal and burning flame, bloomed behind her._

 _The ice stood tall around him, mountainous and gargantuan in crystalline glory against a cold and starry night of endless beauty, and as she sang in the silent and endless night amongst the halls of her brothers cold roses bloomed all around her, roses made of ice._

 _Ice, ice and fire, raging against each other, and so the ice was melted and the fire extinguished until the waters covered the world. It sank into the earth, and so life sprang up everywhere, the land made green and living anew._

 _Fire. Ice. Life._

"And so you wake". That voice – the Green Man? It was cracking now, a thousand times deeper than it had been, and he sat up with the world spinning around him to still see him sitting there, that man in the robes and the oaken mask. "I thought you would. You are the weakest of all of them. There is almost nothing of the Power in you". Robb's stomach cramped, his entire body twitching, voices not his own filling his head with songs of long-forgotten horrors, and as the shadows danced before his eyes he thought he could see the mask moving. It was no mask. It was the Green Man's face, antlers pushing bloody and twisted from his brow like maggots from the eyes of a corpse. His mouth opened, filled with teeth and blood and Weirwood sap. His eyes burned blue and cold, like the heart of Winter. Like the end of all things.

And then he was gone. All of him, all faded into the shadows and the Weirwoods, all but for his voice. " _All of it returns, little king_ " it drifted from the leaves of the trees around him, a wind filled with voices that boomed within his head. As Robb stood he coughed, blood spilling out over the back of his hand, agony pouring from his eyes. Still he could see. Somehow. The Green Man would not let him do anything but see. He saw what he had led his friends and guards into.

" _You hear and you see, but yet your eyes remain closed. You think the world is as simple as light and dark? That is not the nature of the world that we live in_ ". Rymund lay the closest, writhing on the ground, his hands closed around his throat, screaming and screaming until blood flew from his lips and something broke inside his throat, yet still he howled in the silence on a voice made forever quiet, the nightmares scourging at his mind. Robar sat some distance away, propped up against a Weirwood tree, his pieces of armour torn from his body yet shining like a beacon in the darkness, and with his fingernails he carved patterns into the skin of his shoulders, his upper body covered in bloody runic scratches and the redness covering his hands, silent prayers to the Seven forced out in whispers through teeth ground together almost until the point of breaking.

" _Why should sorcery be any different? Earth and Water, Bronze and Iron, Light and Shadow, Fire and Ice– all are one. All are intertwined. All are different. All are the same_ ". Jon was prone of the ground some ways off, a murder of crows circling above his head, wolves dancing about him, all cawing and howling along with his silently moving lips, his eyes rolled up far back into his head and his mind in all of them, yet none of them, his soul adrift and lost on the winds. Lyra was elsewhere, charging through the trees, bears hounding after her, ripping at her, snapping at her with bared fangs, carrying her upon their shoulders as ravens pecked at her eyes and the earth trembled beneath her every step, and she laughed as she ran, shrieking madness upon the wind.

" _All of it is coming back. The Doom has lifted and the tides are coming back in. Magic is coming back. The old powers are returning to your world. Your Gods have reawoken_ ". Ebbert's chain had melted and extended and encircled the whole of the Weirwood that he was now strangled against, the links choking him as his hands were pressed against that white trunk with his fingertips first, nails torn away, foam oozing from his open mouth and tears running down his cheeks in his silent, seized terror. And then there was Roren Bulwer, sitting by the Old Tree, cradled in its branches like a sleeping babe, the carved face moving silently in a lullaby that only Roren could hear in his dreams.

 _No_. " _All of them are returning. All of it is returning_ ". The Old Tree had a mouth full of bloody teeth and curses, eyes full of burning blue hate, and Its branches were not cradling Roren but burrowing into his flesh, pushing out his eyes with sounds of slick popping and crushing, enveloping him, choking him, drowning him in red sap, slashing into his soul and infecting him with darkness. The Darkness within the world, the Darkness within the trees, that Darkness in which the Children slept.

And now they woke from their aeonian slumber. " _Winter is Coming, little king. And the cold knows no mercy_ ".

"Your Grace! Your Grace!" And he woke up, Edric shaking him awake by his arm. He bolted upright, panting, his lips cracked and his heart hammering in his breast. "Thanks the Gods!" the young boy exclaimed as he sat back and away from Robb in the morning light of dawn as the sun rose over the Isle of Faces. "I thought that-!"

"What did you see, Edric?" Robb asked, his clothes and cloak and the skin of his body all slick with fever sweat, grabbing the youngster hard by the shoulder and affixing his starry eyes with his own. "What did you see? What did He make you see? What do you remember?"

"I-" the boy furrowed his brow and looked in confusion to all the others, all as one lying prone on the grassy ground of the clearing around the now so faded and cold campfire, before he turned back to Robb. "I was sitting with you, and then Master Rymund started to sing, and I can't remember anything after that. I must have fallen asleep, your Grace, for I dreamt of Starfall. I dreamt of a woman with black hair and eyes like mine, crying as a man that looked like Lord Jon held her and kissed her and took her in his arms and-" he shook his head and rubbed his face. "I can't remember, your Grace. I woke up moments ago, but I can hardly remember anything of my dream".

"Good" Robb nodded and made to wet his lips, but on his tongue was nothing but the taste of blood. "Good". The less Edric remembered the better. Gods, it would have been better for all of them if they had never come there, to that accursed Isle of Faces. Lies and prophecy and riddles all – it had to be – and he hardly understood a tenth of it. Think not of it. He tried to rise, but flowers had grown over his legs and lower body as he slept. Thorny and barbed blue winter roses, petals streaked red with his blood, their roots having burrowed through the fabric of his britches and planted themselves in his skin. "Sorcery" Robb growled and winched in pain. "I fucking hate sorcery".

Edric helped to cut him loose, and then they set about waking the others. Ebbert gibbered and twitched the most, weeping as he slept, so they woke him first, and when they did he rambled at first, spitting out fragments of words, his hands clutching at his Maester's chain like it was half a lifeline and half a noose. Soon, he began to calm down, though it was hardly an improvement as he did. "I'm sorry, your Grace" he whispered as he clung to the fabric of Robb's doublet like a frightened child. "We were so pathetic, thinking we knew so much. Sanctity of inconsequential knowledge. Blind, blind, all of us blind. Gods keep my soul, the things that I saw. The things that I saw…"

Jon and Lyra woke easily, too, but both of them seemed to easily forget themselves, and Lyra especially shuddered, her eyes rolling far back into her head every so often without she actually intending them to, and when she did the birds in the trees lifted off their branches and whirled in the sky above, cawing in shock and apprehensive fear. She had to be shaken out of it every now and then. At least she was better off than Rymund and Robar.

"I am well, your Grace" Ser Royce told him, though that was not so the truth. The scratches on his body were far fewer than what Robb had seen before, in that nightmare of a vision, but they were still there. The skin of his shoulders were bare and bloodily decorated, deep gashes made by his fingertips around his collarbone, twisted, jagged runes all. Robb recognised them as the same runes as were stamped into the bronze plates of Royce's armour, though more precisely made and a little different – the originals as opposed to the copies, it seemed to him. But for Royce's pale countenance and his fever shudders he was nothing to the side of Rymund.

Rymund rose when roused and tried to speak, but his so melodious voice did not come out. Eyes shooting wide in confusion and pain he tried to speak, to speak and speak again, clutching his throat where he sat on that stony seat beside his lute, yet still no words escaped him. Only strangled hisses, distorted and crushed, breaking again and again, and when he realised that nothing he did could bring his songs back he began to weep. From out of the shadows of the trees a shape did then intrude. Not one of those brown-skinned and chestnut-eyed children – had they been children, or Children? – but not one of the Green Men either.

"The Gods took your voice for a reason, my friend" he said and laid his hand on Rymund's shoulder, but still that hopeless weeping did not stop. "They have given you power you cannot even imagine. All of us". He then looked to each of them in turn, skipping past Edric to finally turn his gaze on Robb. "Your Grace" Roren spoke and bent his head in a bow, and Robb was startled enough to lay his hand on his sword.

Those once so tired brown eyes, no life or strength left in him, were now bright and filled with fire. A green fire, a green light that had spread throughout his body so that his every vein, thick and writhing and bulging at his skin, was green. Green, green all over, an emerald fire burning in his eyes and swirling at his temples, pushing outwards like it wanted to escape. His body was covered with vines beneath his skin, faintly glimpsed past his finery, and magic burned within his heart. Robb could… he could feel it.

 _Gods have mercy_ , he could feel it in all of them.

"We should never have come here" he bared his teeth and turned towards the shore and the boats that waited there, and they rose along with him, looking at him to lead them. Why did he feel like a blind man leading the blind? He had no inkling of where to lead them, what to fight, what to do. The world had been torn away before him, and what had he left to do now?

Justice. Justice and vengeance. That was what he could do. That was what he could give the world. After that… he was sure that he would think of something. He did not know now, but the Gods would show him the way, just like they already had.

But what had that Green Man said, in that dream that was partly reality and more feverish nightmare than anything else he had ever seen? That his blood, the Wolfsblood, was powerful? That they had waited on him, on someone with his blood, for generations? Bat mingled with Wolf – Houses Tully and Whent, his maternal Grandfather Lord Hoster and his late Grandmother Minisa Whent of Harrenhal, joined to Stark? And what had he said after that? The blood of Dragons in Hightower, the blood of the Old One in… Grey Wind had said that Margaery had the blood of the Old One. The Eater of Infants. What was-?

No, superstitions all. The Gods were not good. They were tyrants, steals of voices and bringers of visions and pain and nothing more, and they could very well go shove their prophecies up their wooden arses. Prophecies then, flashes of things to come and things that would never come to pass, but more than that – he reached out to Grey Wind, and the drowsy wolf and him became as one mind near-instantly. The connection was deepened. Strengthened. All of them, their powers strengthened. So perhaps the Gods were not tyrants after all.

Perhaps they were just bloodthirsty.

"We return to Harrenhal" he proclaimed, and slowly the lot of his followers nodded, even Edric. "The Gods have given us strength. Let go use it to shove a sword up Joffrey Baratheon's arse".

* * *

 _To the inbred Fuckwit that sits on the Iron Throne –_

 _You have been lying to me, abomination._

 _I do not take kindly to being lied to._

 _All this time you have been treating with hand half-empty. My littlest sister is safe, in the Riverlands and well out of your reach. You have been lying to me, Joffrey Hill. You have only Sansa. Agree to my demands, give her back to me, and I will spare you and your incestuous family._

 _You bested Stannis, and his Red God. My Gods are far older than his, and much older than yours. And you have angered them. You have woken the North, Lannister bastard. And Winter is Coming._

 _I will have my sister back, or Winter will come for House Baratheon and the Westerlands next._

 _The North remembers._

 _Robb Stark, Slayer of Lions_

 _King in the North_

* * *

 _ **Sansa**_

"I have to get you out of the city, Lady Sansa" Ser Dontos said as they moved under one of the waterfront bridges of the outer harbour in disguise. "The King is enraged".

Sansa was thankful for Dontos Hollard, the last living member of his House. He was a kind soul, bereaved for misfortune, and she was glad that she had urged Joffrey to save his life, even if she had felt the repercussions for it tenderly. He had been her sole source of comfort for a great long while, meeting in the godswood of the Red Keep to discuss their plans of escape and departure, though always he had urged her to be cautious, to remain, to stay quiet and obedient and play their game and the part as the little bird. But that night had been different. He had waited on her earlier than usual, clad in dark clothes and holding the same for her, telling her that they needed to leave that very same night. He said that Joffrey, having heard of the capture of Harrenhal some five days hence, had called for her execution.

She knew, in her heart of hearts, that there was something strange about that. Still she did not protest. She was too eager to leave, and she had brought the only precious things she owned with her to the godswood. She suppressed the mistrust she felt of it all as they, by the ropes Ser Dontos provided, let them make their way down the side of the Red Keep that faced the sea to a small ledge carved into the rock, all but invisible to the naked eye from above or below. From it handholds descended, towards the Blackwater and the waterfront. The night was dark, black as ink with the clouds overhead blotting out both moon and stars, and she saw terrors in the shadows cast by Ser Dontos's dimmed lantern as they laboriously had made their way down the side of the cliff.

She was not a climber. Bran had been the climber, and Arya too, in part. She had not been like them. She had attended all her lessons on song and dance and sewing instead. She had learned all those things she now knew were false, about honour and nobility. But she had the blood of climbers. Her grandmother had been Lyarra Stark, who in turn had been the daughter of Arya Flint, who had been the greatest climber of them all. Some stories said that the Flints had climbed the Wall and traded with the Wildlings in ages past. That they had interbred with the Wildlings and… other things.

Stories of Snarks and Grumpkins all, but she had clung to those stories closer than she clung to the handholds in the sharp rock that would have cut her palms apart if not for the gloves on her hands. The stories, she thought, knew that she could climb. All she had to do was believe.

There was power in belief.

After what felt like hours upon hours, and since the night was dark she had no way of telling the passing of time, they had made it onto the craggy outcroppings at the bottom of the cliffs, and carefully they climbed it, and Sansa had pulled her smelly disguise, dark and morose, closer about her body over the white cloak she wore over her shoulders. In her mind, despite the many washes she had put it through to get the large stains of blood away, it still smelled of him. Her brave Hound. _He took a song and a kiss, and left me nothing but a bloody cloak._ Nothing but a bloody cloak and memories.

In silence she and Ser Dontos Hollard crept down the streets of the waterfront, keeping low and under and out of sight. "What has made the King so angry, Ser Dontos?" she asked quietly, but he waved her on and ignored her question at first as they moved ahead once again, hurrying down the waterfront path, avoiding the few people that stood on the piers and docks around them. Disguises were all well and good, Sansa's red hair hidden by a drawn up hood, but still it was better if she remained perfectly unseen. Her heart hammered in her breast, and she could scarcely believe how frightened she was, or how much she longed for the freedom Ser Dontos claimed to give her.

"The King's raging" Dontos told her softly as they went under the cover of a small bridge, her dirty clothes wrapped around her despite the stink, but as long as they brought her safe out of that nest of vipers she would hold them close and luxuriate in their stench as if it was the scent of dewdrops. "He's furious at Lord Tywin. I heard it from- from a friend. We have common acquaintances. He said the King threw his goblet at Lord Tywin, screaming so hard that Grandmaester Pycelle had to give him Milk of the Poppy to calm him down".

"Why is King Joffrey so angry?" she asked, but she remembered what Tyrion's sellsword goon had once said. _There's no cure for being a cunt_. Joffrey was a mad dog, an inbred beast with his salivating maws filled with bloody rabid froth. Of course he raved. His heart was as black as those cells that he frequented so often. Only the Gods knew what happened to the people he threw into the Black Cells.

"He got a message. My friend managed to steal it" Dontos confided and reached into his sleeve to pull out a parchment, crumpled and dirtied, to hand over to her. As she read the short message, certainly originating from a raven's bearings, Dontos went on speaking to her half-listening ear. "Your brother, he's… he's beaten all armies sent against him, my Lady. The North itself was attacked, by Reavers, but he bested them too. He's got Harrenhal, he's got Jaime and the Mountain. And some say he's making an alliance with the Tyrells. I've heard that he's got an new commander at his side, too, who rides a Direwolf into battle-"

Sansa, having read all the message and heard the words, smiled like she had seen the sun for the first time in a year. And she felt just like it. Arya had been a menace, always, but she was safe and she was glad. _Praise to the Gods, the Old and the New_. "The North remembers" she whispered and crushed the message in her hand before taking it for herself, putting it into her bodice. "Winter is Coming".

"You are very beautiful when smiling, my Lady" Dontos offered suddenly, and she looked to him to notice a shimmer in his eyes and a blush in his cheeks before he averted his gaze with a flinch. "B-but you sound very scary when you say that".

"Pardon me, Ser Dontos. I did not mean to" she said aloud, but inside was a whole different matter. _Of course I do… Southron. Of course it sounds scary. You should be scared. You've woken the North. Winter is Coming. You should all be very, very afraid_. Somehow, now, after all those days spent in the capital, she felt as if she breathed clearly for the first time. Her family was out there. And now she was going to get back to them.

Time passed slowly in the dark, yet there they stood, waiting, until someone in the far distance began to play some strange melody on a flute. It was a song she did not recognise of a style that she did – minor keys, mournful and despondent, serious in tone, to a melody clearly inspired by ancient drone music. It was Northern. She could have played that herself – on the harp or the fiddle, of course, not the flute, she had never been too good with the flute – and at Winterfell it would not have seemed out of place at all. In response to the melody Ser Dontos whistled like some indeterminable bird.

It was a signal. Soon, from out of the darkness, came a long rowboat manned by men so ordinary that to a one they seemed to have been walking the piers before they decided for a bit of late-night sport at rowing, their oars muffled and padded all. One of them, the one at the helm holding a dimmed lantern, the man who Ser Dontos hurriedly approached as the boat neared their little walkway under the bridge, wore a padded fencer's vest in leather, and when it flapped open in the nightly breeze she caught sight of a silver broach. Silver and circular, bearing the shape of a mockingbird.

One of Lord Baelish's men.

Of course. That must have been Ser Dontos's friend on the Small Council. Friend… no. Lord Baelish had no friends. Only lackeys, enemies and people he used like pawns for his own gain. Why was he doing any of this? Why risk his position at court to bring her out of King's Landing?

Rumours at the court of the Red Keep said that Lord Baelish had boasted about bedding Mother, about claiming her maidenhead when the two of them were young and raised together at Riverrun. She thought long on that as Ser Dontos and that boatswain, Dess of no surname, helped her aboard the boat before they turned it about and headed for the open wreck- and ash-filled waves of Blackwater Bay. She knew that the rumours, if true, lended itself to nothing. Mother had told her that the only man she had ever been with, the only man she had ever loved, was Father. But they did make something apparent: Lord Baelish loved Mother, or at least desired her. Had desired her. And she knew that she looked much like Mother had in her youth. Everyone kept telling her that.

Especially Lord Baelish, though not with his words. When the boat was firmly out on the Blackwater she considered that. Lord Baelish also asked her, always, to be more familiar. To call him Petyr. She did not want to, and she did not like the way he looked at her. Ever since he had returned from Bitterbridge, citing Margaery Tyrell's disappearance as the reason why he had failed in his mission to bring the Tyrells into the royal fold, he had often run into her as she walked the halls and the palace grounds of the Red Keep, as if by happenstance, and talked to her in what seemed to her to be hours, given how little she cared to listen to him. Still she knew better. And she knew better than to trust anyone in King's Landing, especially those with hidden agendas and uncertain allegiances.

What did Petyr want with her? She would not put it past any other man with his inclinations to abduct her and take her for his own, but that was not Lord Baelish's way. He would not have been so careless for passion's sake. No, this was for political gain, somehow. Was he intending to bring her to aunt Lysa and so curry favour with the Lady of the Vale? Or did he perceive of the Baratheons of King's Landing as losing the war against Robb, and so sought favour with her brother by returning her to him? Or was she supposed to be handed off to someone else?

Lies within lies, rings within rings, schemes within schemes – such was the game the nobles played.

At last, while she shivered in the cold winds as they made across the Blackwater's black waters, she saw it up ahead: a ship, the name struck from is prow by hastily painted white, a merchant vessel that was all but a barge, its sails sleek and flying colours she did not recognise, came into sight around a bend of black cliffs. It was lit by dimmed lanterns at bowsprit, midcastle and aft, and when they came to it ropes were slung down the sides of its railings by tanned sailors with suspicious eyes. Ser Dontos was first up, relief and gladness both on his face, but when he was up at the ship he was told something by someone that helped him remember his courtesy. He helped Sansa aboard – and she found that her suspicions were true.

On the deck of that ship were two men the most principal amongst the sailors and the hired guardsmen; Ser Lothor Brune, quiet, loyal, stocky and strong, with his squashed nose, square jaw and a mat of nappy grey hair, stood to the side of his master in dark clothes replacing his armour but his sword still slung from his hip. It had never been that much of a secret. Everyone who knew to look deeper than just the surface of things knew who his employer was. Lord Petyr Baelish had the look about him of a taskmaster long at work that night beneath the sails, not a one carrying the green and black-orange-white of his house about their body as livery but everyone still the same seeming his servants. That nameless vessel was his ship, and on its deck he had no need to seem as humble and unworthy of note as he did at court. On the deck he was master.

On the deck he was king.

"Here she is, my Lord" Ser Dontos smiled gladly the way of Lord Baelish as the Master of Coin beckoned her towards him, and she hurried to his side even as Ser Dontos began to praise himself. "I did as you asked, my Lord. Will you take me out of here now, away from this wretched city? I've half a mind to return to Duskendale, even, despite all. The gold I was promised, my Lord – when will I-?"

Ser Dontos's question was cut short by Lothor Brune, who stepped up to him, drew his sword and opened the last Hollard's throat in the same single, almost liquid motion. Fear seized her heart, and for a moment she felt terrified as Ser Dontos slumped to the deck at Ser Brune's feet with a thud, his blood spilling over his shoddy shoes. "Hush, Sweetling" Petyr took her by her shoulders and turned her away from the carnage, pulling her into an embrace that was part fatherly, part amorous and all in all equally unwelcome. Still she let him, as long as she did not have to look at that murderous brute of a man. Dontos had been kind. Greedy, perhaps, but kind. She did not want to look at his killer, or know that he was there.

"He's taken care of, Lord Baelish" the brute of a false knight – she knew that there were true knights out there in the world, there had to be, surely it was not all lies – nodded the way of Lord Baelish before he wiped his sword down to keep it from rusting and shoved it back into its sheath. "How should I dispose of the corpse?"

"Throw it overboard when you are further out to sea". Lord Baelish spoke quietly, his words still carrying far over the deck of the ship and the open waters beyond. "Perhaps outside Dragonstone or Driftmark. Let Stannis Baratheon be blamed, if anyone should be". He took Sansa by the shoulders and led her away from Ser Dontos, her Jonquil, and his cooling body on that so open and hostile deck, feeling in her heart as if she had merely traded one prison for another. "Don't think less of me, Ca- Sansa. You must understand why I had Ser Brune end him, Sweetling" Lord Baelish whispered into her ear, his breath warm and sickening and entirely too close, close enough to choke her. "A purse full of coin buys a man's silence for a time. A blade across the neck buys it for eternity".

Slowly she nodded as the ship was, by help of long oars, turned about and she was led towards the aftcastle, sat down by a small table some ways off from the rudder, the furnishings there affixed to the deck by sturdy bolts. "I-I understand, Lord Baelish" she wet her lips, and at the sight of the tip of her tongue Lord Baelish's eyes twinkled.

"Call me Petyr" he urged her for the thousandth time, and for the thousandth time she ignored the urging. It was not proper. More than that, she did not want to. "Sit here, Sweetling" he asked her and gently forced her down on one of the chairs by the aft railings. "Wait here. I will be with you in another two or three days, and we will take you to safety. The King mustn't think we left the city together. In the mean, listen to Ser Brune, Captain Raan or Dess, the Water Dancer. Keep to yourself" he went on as he gently pulled the rags from about her shoulders, but he said nothing more afterwards. He stared at her inner cloak, her second cloak, the white cloak her brave Hound had left her that night, the only thing she praised in her captivity. He stared at it as if it were woven from writhing snakes before he forced his lips tightly together and stalked away.

And so she was left alone, in the silence, as the ship creaked around her and the waves lapped softly against the hull along with the wind. She shivered in the breeze. Robb, Jon, even Brandon and Arya – they had always been better with the cold than her. Father and Uncle Benjen, when he came to visit, would say that it was a Stark thing, that she was in almost all things Mother's daughter. Tully in all but name. In the quiet, as she thought, she heard a bird's twitter on the wind, and watched in silence as a Snow Shrike, its downy coat white and grey with the coming of winter, landed upon the railing close to her, brave despite its size.

She leant against the railing and watched that little bird, so unafraid and slight. It looked to her, cocking its head to the side as it bounded around to face her proper, and she smiled at it. It chirped, and she parted her lips, drew in a breath and let out a soft tone in response.

Faintly she heard the ship around her, the men walking its deck with light or heavy steps, Lord Baelish's voice a whisper as he spoke quietly to Lothor Brune. Her will to cry for herself, for Brave Dontos, for her Hound: all of it was gone as she reached out towards that bird and stroked its gown of fluffy feathers with the tip of her finger. Faintly, as she touched it as the two of them sang together, a chirp and a twitter traded for a tone and a melody, she felt a spinning in her mind and a whisper at the very edge of hearing, then-

"You hear that?" Lord Baelish spoke quietly, down by the midcastle and the main deck, but somehow she heard it as if he was standing close to her, his words coming in sharper every time she touched the Snow Shrike's eiderdowns. "Song of heavens. She is a perfect creature, the most precious thing I have ever come across in the days of my childhood. And he'd marry her off to the Imp!"

"Lord Tywin's wits have been failing him, my Lord" Ser Brune answered quietly, his voice dark and distorted and filled with edges and a sharpness that had not been there before. "Ever since he took that quarrel to the leg when he forced Stannis from the Blackwater. That battle was hard fought. The Stormlanders even breached the gates. No doubt the war is weighing on him".

"If Lord Tywin's wits were failing him, he would not have me sent to Highgarden to make sure this Tyrell-Stark alliance never came to pass" came Lord Baelish's distinctively accented voice in retort. "Loras and Willas Tyrell would make marriages in name only, given their respective" he paused "situations. Still, perhaps enough to make an alliance – and make peace. But perhaps I shouldn't. Perhaps I will support the alliance, and perhaps I can convince the Young Wolf that his sisters would be safer in the Eyrie. With me and their aunt. Perhaps I'll have him call me uncle".

"I appreciate the trust, my Lord – but the less I know, the better" Ser Brune intercut the scheming readily with the tone of a man loath to knowledge. "You're tired. Overworked, and you speak too readily, my Lord. Go back to the King and Lord Tywin, my Lord. I will keep the hostage secure, and meet you again at Stonedance".

They moved again, their steps echoing strangely, and Sansa pulled her finger away from the bird that looked up to her in question. All sounds were muted and soft and as they always had been once again, suddenly, as if the bird was the source of that power. She made a few tones at it, and it chirped back, ending their song as it lifted from the railing and fluttered over to sit, light and graceful, on her shoulder. She smiled at it even as she made an effort to remember Lord Baelish's hushed words. Whatever deviltry, whatever sorcery had allowed her to hear beyond her ears, she was thankful for it. She smiled at the Snow Shrike, and it chirped back and put its downy head against the side of her neck.

It was a little bird, white and grey and native to the North. She remembered them singing outside the windows of her Winterfell chambers, the Snow Shrike, melodious and quick. It was a little bird, far from home.

It was a little bird returning home.

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** I was supposed to put this chapter up on the 30th – but I was too drunk and in much too good company, and on the 1st I was too hung over. Sorry about the delay.

Most of the Ilse of Faces portion and the dream sequence was written in a haze of prescription medication, antibiotics, strawberry soda, Preston Jacobs _A Song of Ice and Fire theories_ videos and the Swiss folk-metal band Eluveitie's _Inis Mona_ on constant repeat. I'd be hard pressed to find actually explain anything that goes on there in short terms.

I'd probably need to write an entire essay on the subject to get my point across. And I won't. I can't be asked. Things will become clearer in time. But there is something I will say right now:

You thought that the Rose in the title of this story was Margaery, didn't you?

 _Tee hee_. Fooled ya ;-)


	12. Deeper Meanings

Chapter Twelve – Deeper Meanings

* * *

 ** _Arya_**

She thought that she had escaped them at Saltpans. She was wrong.

Whatever Rorge had promised the Lannister deserters and the remnants of the Brave Companions in return for her capture had to be of considerable worth, for they chased after her like the dogs of the seven hells. Hunted she ran. She kept off the roads and the paths, cutting across fields and rough forests, letting Stranger waste his energy in the running. Over hill and dale she fled them, but always they chased after, horns blowing, laughter bellowing, curses shouted after her as she vanished out of sight. So on the third day she made up her mind. It was time to start fighting back.

Robb had showed her how to shoot a bow, when Father hadn't been around to protest it of course, and Jon and kennelmaster Farlan had shown her how to set snares and traps. With a little cleverness she could make means to hurt rabbits and small game turn to hurt men and horses.

She rode over bogs and past cliffs, relying on Stranger's sure footing, forcing her pursuers to take long ways around that slowed them down to come after her. She wove her spare mantles into ropes along with plant fibres and strung them up across the width of the path she took by the trees lining it for the same effect. If they ever caught sight of her she would turn in her saddle and loosen arrows at them while riding, carefully preserving each fletch as she had only so many. The first two times she did it she missed. Not the third, or any arrow fired after that.

Syrio Forel had said that she learned quickly. She was glad for it. As those days became long and seemed unending, her quick learning was the only thing that kept her alive.

In the end she got away from them, but only just. They were still a ways after her, but she at least had almost a day on them. She could rest, sharpen her blades, and hunt. That last part proved the most educative, as killing her own food was something she had been unaccustomed to but now seemed to easily done.

Still, the rabbits were cute. Sansa would no doubt have fawned over them, but like all living things they were just meat. If their roles had been reversed she had no doubt that the rabbits would have hunted her for food without a second thought.

The road was lonely still, with only Stranger for company. She passed towns and villages and Riverlander hamlets, but though she snuck into them from time to time to listen to news and steal what she needed to survive she never spoke with anyone or let them see her without her leave. She did not trust them. If they caught her she would be reduced to a bargaining chip again, a full purse of gold walking on two legs, and she would rather not be that again. Lies and greed. She would kill them all first.

The only comfort she took in her days was in her dreams. In them she howled and ran with her smaller cousins, slight things by her side that with barking and pushes of the will were easily controlled. They hunted at her request, those small cousins, and they hunted men. Men in red, or men in scales like silver fishes. They did not hunt the men in white who bore the seal of her brother across their chests, because they were good men. That mark was good. _Grey Wind. Brother_.

 _Robb_.

She would wake from those dreams with a smile and the taste of blood on her lips. They warmed her, yet with every dream there was a sense of urgency. Of running. Of hurry. She needed her help, she needed her warmth. Hurry, she heard the whisper in her mind as she woke – _hurry, and be safe, little one. I love you, little one. I still love you, no matter how many rocks you throw at me_.

And so she hurried onwards, ever onwards, deeper into the Riverlands. She crept into villages at night and listened for news, and she heard a great deal. Robb had taken Harrenhal – that dark and haunted and accursed place – and then turned North. He was heading past Riverrun, they whispered. He was heading for the Westerlands and Casterly Rock, going past northwards. Arya remembered her maps. She knew that the northernmost passage into the Westerlands was by the Golden Tooth. So that was where she was headed. If she was swift enough she could catch Robb's army there.

In one of the more recent places she passed – Harroway, she thought it was called, Lord Harroway's Town, but it was hard to remember those places she snuck into at night under the cover of darkness after tying Stranger to a tree in the woods – she snuck her way towards a tavern and waited outside it in the dark. Soon a man had come out of it, and another and another, men she did not recognise, men and women whose names were not on her list, but one of them was a sailor with a Braavosi belt buckle. She had been very lucky to find a Braavosi on the first night. Too lucky. Very much too lucky, but he was much to graceless to be a Faceless Man. She cornered him, snuck up behind him, stole his dagger and put the tip of Needle at his throat. And so she had her answer – or, at least, a fraction of one.

The Faceless Men came from the House of Black and White, he gibbered out in his fear, obviously not working for them despite being a Braavosi in Westeros. He was just there on a trading course, making profit by selling supplies and swords to the armies that streaked across the war-torn continent like randy tomcats. He wasn't one of them, no good young mistress lady no he wasn't. He told her that the House of Black and White worshiped all gods and none. He had an uncle who had kept the Many-faced God in his youth, so he knew things. All gods, and none, for they worshiped Death in all his aspects.

Which was stupid. Why would you worship death? Death just was, and it came just the same to everyone, no matter what gods they told themselves they believed in.

He told her about acolytes, of how not all members of the temple were Faceless Men, and of how sometimes the mighty would come to them to buy deaths. Sometimes for themselves, sometimes for others. The time was not certain, but if a Faceless Man had been contracted to murder someone they never failed to do so, in the end.

But they didn't want to kill her. They had just wanted her. What for? Why?

For that he had no answer. But the Faceless Men could change their faces, so they could, please don't kill me young lady please. All of them, as one, they had no real faces, just masks made out of the skin of those they slew, and there was a dragon in the depths beneath the House of Black and White that spewed up toxic fumes and their leader, the Kindly Man was death itself with a bare skull bereft of flesh instead of a face and-

She had known that he was grasping them. So she asked him instead what it meant – valar dohaeris.

He told her it meant "all men must serve", posed in opposition to "valar morghulis – all men must die". It was a custom among some people, he had noted, some rare people who sometimes had business in Braavos, and most captains or merchants or commoners or Water Dancers never said anything of the sort, no, never. You spoke one phrase and got another back in return. Always like that with a few people, I swear that is all I know good lady, I swear-

She had thrown his dagger at his feet as she stepped away from him, and when he bent to pick it up she crept away into the darkness and was gone, heading back for Stranger in the woods outside Harroway. She had learnt almost nothing. Almost nothing at all. But unlike her siblings she was clever. She knew a thing or two about thinking hard and putting things together in her head.

Perhaps Valar Morghulis – Valar Dohaeris… perhaps it was some manner of password. An exchange between a few, not a saying but a secret language like she had with Sansa all those years ago, before her sister became a stuck-up bitch who cared more about dresses than having fun. A code. Yes, that was what Robb had called it once. Speaking in code, like a signal. Something with deeper meanings.

Or maybe it really was just a saying. A morbid saying and nothing but. And she was seeing Snarks in the hedges and Grumpkins in the shadows. Travelling off the road, hunted by strangers, took its toll on her, and she just wanted to go home. She wanted to be back at Winterfell, she thought as she curled up around herself in the small hours before dawn, hugging her knees as she begged of the hunting dreams to lull her to sleep. She wanted Nymeria to warm her, Jon to tussle her hair and Robb to tell her to be careful again. She even wanted Sansa, with her stupid songs and her stupid dresses. She wanted Bran to tell her about his odd dreams and Rickon to be a brat like he always was.

She wanted Mother and Father. When thinking of Father she still felt as if a blade stabbed through her heart. At those times, in the dark, she wondered where all her tears had gone.

She wondered if she could ever remember how to cry.

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

Tytos Blackwood's funeral was a strange, strange thing. It had not been intended to be that way.

A few of them had gathered, mostly Jonos Bracken and his daughters as well as a clade of Riverlords and Northern allies to House Blackwood, at Raventree Hall on their march towards the Golden Tooth. All of the great Lords excepting but a few brought their men with them, an army of massive proportions gathering before the passes into the Westerlands just west of Riverrun and Wayfarer's Rest. From there they would disperse and sack and destroy, while others would head to back to the Riverlands and Harrenhal and entrench themselves. Meticulous planning through long hours and sleepless nights had been his lot - he would leave nothing to chance now.

This what it was all coming down to: the invasion of the Westerlands. He had decided long ago that all the courtesies that his Northmen showed the Riverlands in the war, the prohibitions towards plunder and reaving, would no longer apply there. They would take whatever they wanted as recompense for the brothers, fathers and sons they had lost in the war. That, Robb thought, would please the Lords in his service and secure his position as king.

Still, no amount of gold they stole from Lannisport and Casterly Rock could bring the dead back to life. He felt that weight on his shoulders all the while, heavier than even his accursed crown, that ugly thing of bronze and iron and blades. At times he wondered how many men would have to die so that he could have his vengeance.

 _As many as it takes_ , some dark part of his mind he had once thought his own would whisper back. _As many as it takes to see it done_.

Once he would have doubted that the thoughts in his mind were his own.

Once.

Hoster Blackwood had been fuming in silent berserker rage all the while as they lowered his father and elder brothers into the earth around the dead Weirwood in the great godswood of Raventree Hall, his mother and sister and three brothers gathered about him in collective sorrow, his father's black cloak of raven feathers wrapped about his shoulders. He was Lord of Raventree and Blackwood Vale now, a boy of sixteen merely, brooding and dark all the while ever since the Mountain had slain those men that they buried on that day. He had been a boy, forced to become a man – and then Robb remembered that Hoster was only a little younger than himself. Truly? Was it really so? Sometimes, when his wounds hurt and it was hard to breathe in the mornings, he felt ancient.

Funerals made him despondent. He supposed that such were the nature of funerals. He wondered what he would feel when he saw Father's bones laid to rest in the crypts beneath Winterfell. He would have had built a sepulchre to rival Cregan's or Brandon the Shipwright's for Father – had that been what he would have wished. No, Father's tomb would be as simple and stern as he had been in life. That would have been Father's wish – he thought. He could not know for certain. It was as if he knew nothing for certain anymore.

As the dirt was shovelled over the dead men he looked to the Blackwood kin. Little Robert Blackwood, four years old, was sickly, pale and weak, and the mourning was not helping his condition. He looked like a little bird, a sickly raven nestling in black clothes too big for him. Robb was certain that Little Robert would not live to see the spring. Winter would claim him first. Perhaps winter would claim them all. Lady Dowager Lynessa Blackwood, born of House Lychester of Castle Lychester, stood holding her youngest three to her, Bethany Blackwood and little Alyn crying haplessly into her skirts. Edmund, more often called Ben, stood to one side of his Lord brother, holding Brynden Blackwood's sword limply in his hands. He seemed to hate the sight of it. Robb understood that feeling, if nothing else. He too had lost a father to the sword.

To one side of the Blackwoods stood Jonos Bracken and his family, rivals and allies and hated enemies to the Lords of Raventree Hall that had still come to pay their respects to Tytos. Lord Jonos had been wounded in the retaking of Stone Hedge shortly after Robb's coronation, and he still walked with a stick, but the battle for their ancestral home had dealt a devastating blow to the Brackens, as Lord Jonos's nephew and heir Hendry had been slain along with his baseborn son Harry. He had come to Raventree Hall with all of his daughters, his wife and his brother and goodsister in tow, along with a few other noble lords. He, at least, had the good sense not to look smug at the death of his rival in front of his King.

Robb wore his crown and his armour, as did the rest of his following on the other side of the Blackwood family. They were at war and had no inklings towards finery, not until their bloody work was over and done. He even wore his crown that day, and there had been many whispers amongst the gathered crowd around the three main followings when he had been one of Tytos Blackwood's pallbearers, balancing the upper right corner of the thick briar wood slab on which the late Lord Blackwood had been laid upon his armoured shoulder. That, most would say, had been an honour. Robb saw it as nothing but his duty.

Armour or not, crown or not, crowd or not, no matter the sword at his hip, he wore the cloak his father had the seamstresses make for him for his twelfth nameday, the one made of shadowskin and snow shrike eiderdown and bore his family colours. The cloak he could not help but think of now as Margaery's.

Most of his personal guard stood a ways off, along with the rest of the crowd of smallfolk and highborn alike. They wore their family crests over muted colours where they could, but most of them had no finery with them and so bore their armours about their bodies, just like him. Some of them, the Southrons in particular, eyed the guards surrounding him warily. He surrounded himself now with the same people that had gone with him to the Isle of Faces – though only one of them was the same as they had been before then. Edric was as good a boy as ever, his squire and sword-bearer, trustworthy and kind. The rest…

Rymund hadn't said a word since the Isle. He hadn't been able to. The Gods, the Green Man, had stolen his voice from him, and now he could only pluck at his lute but every time he did so his fingers trembled. Sometimes he forgot himself and tried to sing, but only a fractured animal hiss escaped him. His eyes were haunted and tormented by the songs he could no longer voice, pitted deep in his face. He couldn't even play the flute anymore, for his breath would not obey him. At times he would thumb his knife, and Robb suspected that the bard thought often to open his wrists in self-slaughter. A singer's voice was his greatest treasure, after all. The centre of his being and the foundation of his person. Without that…

Lyra and Jon looked to be least affected, though they would lapse into long periods of silence when they sat or stood or waited, their eyes rolling far into the backs of their heads as they Warged. It was not some strange thing anymore. Robb knew that much. Some bloodlines in the North simply had something additional in them, something that had come from being around the Hearttrees long enough for the Green to seep into their blood, or perhaps through blood, interbreeding with the Greenseers of the Children. This magic was as much a part of them, of him, as his arms or his eyes.

Royce stood off to one side behind Robb as the septon said a whole lot of meaningless words over the bodies in the dirt, his bronze armour burnished red in the rare glimpses of sunlight that trickled down to them through the darkly clouded overcast. In his hands he held a large thing, almost as tall as him, wrapped in a thick oiled quilt, and with his helmet beneath his arm he bent his head in respect. He did not pray along with the septon and most of the Riverlanders. Not anymore. Robb wondered if he thought that the Old Gods would answer his prayers more readily, or if they had simply frightened him into religious conversion. Perhaps a little of both. Perhaps neither.

Ebbert… "I was sent to spy on you, your Grace" Ebbert had no longer bothered to hold back his Northern drawl as he had pulled Robb aside and spoken quietly to him a few days earlier, when they had stopped at Riverrun on their ride. "Maester Gormon, my mentor, Lord Mace Tyrell's uncle, told me to keep an eye on you. Said we were dangerous. I reported to him by messages sent via Willas Tyrell".

"What makes Maester Gormon think that?" Robb had been thankful for the man's honesty, if nothing else. If he professed that much he had doubtlessly changed his colours, and by the look in his eyes he was far less abject than Robb had first thought him to be. "And why is my- why is Margaery's family spying on me?"

"Because Willas is a shrewd man with friends in many places. He's careful, too". Ebbert had paused and furrowed his brow. "And because of the Maester vows. Gormon heard the rumours of your Warging your grace, as the smallfolk told it. And some of my order has vowed to make the world for man, not for monsters and magic. Some in it. I was not initiated, but it stretches far and it reaches high. Man should rule the world, wisely and kindly and in peace. Dragons and wargs and sorcery just… mucks it all up. At least they think so".

"But not you?" Robb had wondered, and he had noted internally that there were enemies all around him, hiding in the shadows as they bid their time. A man could easily grow paranoid when he realised that, but he would not cower before conspiracies and assassins, Lannister or Maester or otherwise. A blade had to be close enough to strike him to kill him, and if the blades of his honour guards and friends did not stop them his sword surely world. "What has made you honest, Maester?"

"The trees opened my eyes" he had said in reply, and Robb, despite himself, had shivered at the awe and hopelessness inherent in those words. "I saw the memories of the thousands upon thousands that live within them, kept alive for eternity, glimpsed through the leaves like fleeting sunlight. Our knowledge at the Citadel is made up of suspicions. Guesswork, theories, lies. How can that compare to memory, to sight and sound? That is magic, the path to true knowledge. And" he had fingered the pommel of the slender and crossguard-less sword at his hip "I've broken one vow already. I've little right to call myself a Maester anymore. I might as well break the rest of them. The first good and proper thing I have ever done of my own free will".

Free will. Robb wondered about that. When the whispers of the Trees could seem as his own thoughts, were any actions he undertook truly his own? Or was he merely a pawn in the game of the Green Man and the unknown forces he championed? Lies within lies, rings within rings, schemes within schemes. Were the Gods really gods, or nothing but ghosts within the trees?

Damn it all, he did not know anymore.

And of course there was Roren. Robb would rather not look at Roren, or even think about the man. Slowly the ceremony came to an end, and as some of the lesser lords trailed off he marched over to what remained of House Blackwood, beckoning Royce with him and making an effort not to stare back at Roren. "Lord Hoster" he stopped before the family, and as one they looked to him. "Lady Mother Lynessa. I would offer my condolences once again. Tytos was a good man, a stalwart warrior, and a friend. Brynden would have made a good Lord one day, and Lucas rode in my personal guard. I cannot-"

"Thank you, your Grace" Lady Lynessa offered, though there was no sincerity on her voice, only grief and anger in her raging hazel eyes. "Your condolences mean so much to us, with my husband and sons buried in the dirt for worm feed-"

"Mother, stop it" Hos Blackwood snapped, though he seemed to regret his tone instantly, and looked to Robb with a crestfallen expression. He lowered his head in apology, before he thought better of it and sank down to one knee, silently bidding his family to do the same. Lady Lynessa took a long time in doing that, as did little Alyn, but they knelt just the same. "My lands are yours, my King".

"Your lands are yours, Blackwood" Robb shook his head and bid them all to stand. He have had enough of ceremony as it was, especially with Lady Lynessa having a septon offer her husband and sons to the earth when only one of them had kept the Seven. "I need them not. I need you and your steel in my vanguard". Berserkers, after all, were always good to have. And every sword counted towards victory. "Ser Royce" he beckoned with his hand, and Robar came over to him, the great bundle almost as tall as himself held awkwardly in his hands. He was pale, feverish, more bone than flesh, but he was still strong as Robb took the bundle from him and uncovered it.

It was a longaxe, its steel head wide, with a thin blade that had sharp horns at both the toe and heel of the bit, the bladed part almost thirteen inches across and bearded long. The haft was five and two thirds of a foot long all in all, made out of black ironwood reinforced with steel, and the butt of it was a spike, protruding from a clump of steel that could serve as a mace. Long after the smithing was done on it, smiting Robb had ordered from Riverrun shortly after the Slaughter at Harroway, Ser Royce had bent over the head of the axe and engraved it with his strange, fey runes by chisel and hammer. "First Men runes" he offered wanly as Hos took the axe on trembling arms. "It's an old spell, for protection. And for victory".

"Keep this as the instrument of your vengeance, Hos" Robb told him, and the young Lord nodded solemnly, his near-permanent rage smoothed. He looked aside and spotted Jonos Bracken still loitering around, eyeing them glumly. "It is my wish that the alliance I made between Bracken and Blackwood stands. You or one of your brothers will wed one of Lord Jonos's daughters, at the very least. I will have Smalljon help you make the arrangements". Ser Royce pulled at his shoulder gently, and inwardly he bared his teeth. "If you would excuse me, Lord Blackwood?"

Most within the crowd stared hard at him and his companions, the ones that had seen the Green Man with him, as they as one headed close towards the tree, Lady Lynessa staring at his back all the while. On his way he passed Jeyne Bracken, Brynden Blackwood's former betrothed. She looked like a likeness of Barba Bracken he had seen once, a painting of Aegon the Unworthy's principal sweethearts: black of hair and dark of eye, buxum despite being only half a year younger than him, no doubt beautiful in the eyes of some men. Her manner was quite different from the Fat Dragon's mistress's, though, averting her eyes from him in deep shyness. He was certain that she would be handed off to the young Lord Blackwood now, like she was nothing but some sort of resource.

No matter what happened to him, no matter where this path that the Green Man had set him on led, he would never let anyone treat Margaery like that. Not while he still had blood in his veins and a heart to make it pulse.

"You are sure about this, mate?" Jon muttered as he approached him by the massive dead Weirwood that stood in the wild godswood beneath Raventree Hall and his companions that were arrayed before it in a semi-circle. In response to the hushed question as Robb took his place in it at the very middle of the arch he shook his head. Faintly he noted how Lyra off to one end of the arch put her bare palm against the trunk of the dead tree while Rymund took his place and did the same opposite her, their other hands linking with the next in the line – Jon and Ebbert – who in turn linked their hands with Robb's. Edric stood to one side, concerned, disbelieving, frightened. Royce was elsewhere. He had drained himself in laying the spell on the axe, and if he had partaken in that ritual he would surely have fallen dead to the ground. "This doesn't come as easily as it does to the rest of us. You sure you want to be a part of it?"

"Bloody well not" he growled back. Within the semi-circle, between Robb and the tree, stood Roren Bulwer. He had shirked his old armour for robes of leather and chainmail, new hair sprouting from his bare head, and with a look Robb's way, a look in which the green in his eyes swirled like pools of murky water upset by storms and fishes with fangs, he reached into his belt and drew a heavy dagger with a Weirwood handle. Using it he cut gashes into his palms, and he put one hand to Robb's brow beneath his crown. Even his blood had a streak of green to it, and it smelled like rotten moss. "Get this over with, priest".

"As you will, my King". Roren was truly Neversleep now. He never slept. He sat up all through the nights, hands on the earth between his knees with his legs folded under him, eyelids flickering as he communed with the roots of the Hearttrees far beneath the surface of the world, roots that ran all throughout Westeros even though the trees that they had nursed had been chopped down or burnt. Even his voice was strange, absent of passion yet filled with fire, and his eyes burned as green as the coiling tentacles that writhed and pushed beneath his skin.

Roren laid his other palm, bleeding rotten red, against the surface of the tree, and so they forced life back into the Raventree.

They had done that at Riverrun too, with a seemingly living tree. The ritual had been Ebbert's suggestion, as he was the one who could make the most sense of the visions and the one who could remember them the best, even though they spoke the loudest to Roren. Robb took the centre of the ritual always, as his blood rejected the visions in much. Roren hoped through that the soil that was Robb's soul would be irrigated by the trees and so the Green would blood stronger within him… or something like that. This was the fourth time they had done the ritual, and he could feel no change from before. He was just as strong as the Green Man had made him by feeding him on Weirwood paste and wine brewed from… he'd rather not know.

It was simply a more direct way of communing with the Gods, he thought, but he didn't tell the others that. If they believed that their power was getting stronger they would be more confidant in it, and thus making it so. The supposed power of belief and all.

Belief was what brought the dead tree outside Ravenhall back to life that day. Well, it was not dead, not truly. Weirwood did not rot, never truly died, but it could be separated from the roots that fed them. Without the roots the spirits, the memories and the years, within the trees could not unite with other trees, making the song discordant and weak. Poison was clogging the nexus of roots beneath the Raventree, and only an influx of power could make it bloom again.

Power, and blood. Pain. No difference, really.

The major roots of the tree shot out tendrils, small and writhing things more like maggots than wood that moved slowly as they offered their minds to the discordant song within the tree. They forced the unnatural connection to move outwards, dormant and wrong and not meant for those that were not Greenseers, to seek sustenance. And sustenance it found. The tendrils found with three bodies of the Blackwood men, and they burrowed into Tytos's, Brynden's and Lucas's dead flesh, feeding off of them, the roots swelling with new life as the corpses laid to rest in such veneration were torn apart. Above their heads the pale branches began to shoot new life at supernatural speed, sprouting red leaves in the hundreds of thousands, at the same time as the white roots burrowed downwards.

When the song within the Raventree joined with the rest of the song of the Children and the Hearttrees, it did not do so gently. The whispers in Robb's mind turned to screams as agony shot through his body, and sights and sounds not his own passed before him, passed through him. He glimpsed the minds of the others there

– Jon's vistas of the Wall and the clammy hands of the living dead reaching for him – Mother teaching her how to swing an axe for the first time at the cliffs overlooking the raging Bay of Ice as her stupid old cousin looked on – he sang about the rains and the Reynes in a hall decked all over with gold and lions – the pride that bloomed in his heart as the chain was placed around his neck for the first time, each link by his own hand forged – the white branches burrowing into his eyes, filling his head with Song and sweet poison –

before the song was remade fully and they could break their bonds to it. Panting all of them they parted, Rymund falling to his knees as he coughed up a stream of black clouts of petrified blood while the rest of them swayed and almost fell. It was all Robb could do to just remain standing. Around him the people stood staring in open awe, highborn and lowborn alike, jaws and eyes agape in wonder with some while others frightfully spoke prayers to the Seven. Yet others merely stared at him and his band, wondering what power had allowed to do such impossible things. They would know, in time. Even he had come to know.

He had the least Green in him of all of them. That made it hurt all the worse. But it also saved him. The visons that haunted the others even in their waking hours were confined to his dreams and could be chased away by thoughts of Margaery and better things, better days to come, the world he would build for himself when the war was over. And at the Isle of Faces he had woken the first, and the easiest. Still they spoke to him the most often, the Trees and the… the things within them. He had the driving part to play in the war to come. A war against a world that was fighting the return of the natural order of things. The return of the Old Powers.

They needed him to be ready for Winter. The cold knew no mercy. If his House was to survive he had to fight. Small wonder they pushed the sights harder at him.

He almost didn't feel Jon's or Roren's hands on his shoulders and under his arms, lifting him up as they aimed him towards the tree. He felt the cold handle of Roren's knife sting like ice against his skin as it was pressed into his hands, though. It was what forced the whispers out of his head, at least for a little while. "Your turn, your Grace" Roren grunted out, and Robb nodded. They had all done their share at the knife, all but Ebbert now, and every man bent his head equally before the Old Power, beggar or king alike. He removed their hands from him and advanced towards the trunk of the tree with blade in hand, the bark smooth and uncut. That was wrong. Somehow he knew that it was very, very wrong.

Regaining his balance he sank down before the tree and put the tip of the knife to the bark, carving into its trunk a roaring, vengeful face with cruel eyes and a mouth full of fangs.

That was, after all, how he imagined the faces of the Gods.

* * *

 ** _Arya_**

She had begun to figure it all out when they caught up to her.

She was making her way across the shallows of the headwaters of the Red Fork, almost in the rocky foothills of the Westerlands, and as she clung to Stranger's mane as he slogged through the muddy water, swinging from islet to islet in the middle of the sluggishly flowing open expanse of water. She let her mind wander even as she helped the horse find his footing, her thoughts flowing together with Stranger's like how the Red Fork mingled with the waters of the Tumblestone from the south.

She remembered those men at the docks in Saltpans. She remembered how their faces had shimmered and shifted, but it was always smoke, water in a well through which she could easily see the true metal of the wishing coin glimmer at the bottom. She knew that they had been readily, known it with but a glance. But Jaqen H'gar had been different in doing that. Stronger, perhaps. His false image had seemed much more real, and his whole body and manner had changed with it. Was his magic somehow stronger than theirs? Or was there something she did not know about it all?

And was this related in any way to why they wanted her? She had forced Jaqen to help her by naming to him his own name, one of the three names whose owners that he had to kill to repay the debt he owed her, and so extorted him, but was that really all there had been to it? Truthfully? Because she had come to learn just what happened to people who told the truth-

Suddenly she heard shouting behind her, off in the distance, and she craned her head around to see a gathering of men and horses there, just within range of her bow. She counted five, seven, ten, twelve – and then she stopped counting. Too many for her to take on her own, so it made no difference. She had only but one recourse: to get to the far banks on Stranger's tired back and hurry deeper into lands more fully controlled by her brother's army.

But the going was slow, for the waters were muddy and high and movement was sluggish. The slush of dirt and water spilled all over her, all but covering her as she urged Stranger forwards. On they struggled, on and on, and she clung to hope as fiercely as she did Stranger's flank.

No arrows flew over her head as she came onto the far banks, Stranger struggling through the mud, and she urged him on, staring back at the men hounding after her. In the back of her mind the whispers became incredibly palpable, like an itch, like a scratch she could not pick, but she focused on none of it. She kicked Stranger in the sides to urge him forwards faster, away and out of sight.

But the days spent in flight had worn him down, and Stranger, after taking only a few more shaky steps, could walk no more. He sagged to the ground, keeling over, and Arya cursed viciously.

No matter how she kicked and begged and asked of the horse he would run no more, and so she jumped off him, cut the saddlebags off of him, slung them all over her back and sprinted towards the edge of the wooded hills, cursing all the while. She cursed the horse, she cursed herself for not noticing how much she had worn him down, she cursed the Faceless Men for chasing her and Jaqen H'gar for deceiving her and-

As she hoisted her things onto her back and ran for the trees she felt an ache, a pressure, start to make itself known in her mind, whispered words on the edge of hearing.

She didn't make it far. With her pulse pounding in her ear as the clouds weighed down on her like they were filled with thunder she made it a good ways into the woods, tripping and falling over the grass and the moss under the cover of the yellowed leaves now beginning to fall. She heard hooves around her, behind her, and past hollows and rises, in ankle-deep in the fading green of the woods, she was stopped under the shadow of an oaken tree as the hunters, armed in leathers and pieces of rusted-over mail, came upon her.

"Stop running, little girl!" As the riders surrounded her, all more than dozen, bearing spears and swords and nets and bows with arrows, she looked to their leader who spoke and did not recognize him at all. "Blast, this has been a long chase! I have half a mind to let Chime have his way with you before-"

That was as far as he got before most of his men and horses were killed.

For then, as the pressure increased only to suddenly vanish in Arya's head, the air was filled with howling.

Wolves fell on her pursuers. Wolves of several different coats and sizes and breeds and packs, wolves of different ages and strength, working as one beast under one mind. A flurry of fang and fur and claw, slashing through the men and their horses, dozens of them falling upon the hunters so savagely. One by one they were ripped to shreds and devoured, and Arya took the time to turn and flee, an advantage in the chaos. As she came under the shadow of a yew she reached for her pack to string her bow – but she had no time. The leader of the band, his face scratched so badly that once of his eyes had been reduced to a leaky stream down his shredded cheek, his spear slick with blood and tufts of fur, chased after her on foot while his horse screamed as it died.

She turned about towards him and held Needle high, but he was good with the spear and knocked it out of her hand with a sweeping motion. She had to throw herself to the ground to not be impaled as he followed through with a thrust, her belongings scattered over the ground as they fell from her back. "Stay still!" he shouted, and by the rage on his face all thoughts had fled him. All he saw what the gold she would bring him if he brought her at least partially alive to the Faceless Men.

But from out of the shadows a shape intruded, the wolves bowing to it like puppets before a puppeteer. Grey fur splotched with white and black her golden eyes was one with the gloom under the trees, and when she opened her slavering jaws her teeth were like daggers in the night, inked with blood and death. Arya felt her more than saw her. A rift between them, still she heard her.

Still she heard her thoughts like they were her own.

"Fucking Starks and their fucking sorceries!" the one-eyed man hissed out as he bared his teeth at the snarling wolves. "Rorge better have been right about this! The Faceless Men better pay well for-!" And that was as far as he got. As he advanced on Nymeria with spear in hand Arya jumped to the feet with the knife from her belt in hand, a misericord with double edges. She ran for him and jumped up onto his back, and more than just mud covered her as she drove the knife into his eye and his throat and reduced his face into nothingness.

Even a long while after he had stopped kicking and gurgling and screaming and the fluids of his bowls had started to leak out of him she sat atop his chest, digging deep gouges into his cranium with the tip of her dagger. He was to blame, somehow. Or maybe just a way for her to let out the hatred in her heart, the blackness that made her sick to her core at times. In the end she let her arms, shaking with tiredness, fall to her side, the dagger dropping to the moss beneath the trees. Through the cloud cover up above a lone ray of sunlight broke through and fell on her face – and she felt something wet and warm against her neck.

Nymeria approached her tentatively, slowly, but once she took in her sent past the year of death and despair she had suffered through she recognised Arya. She sniffed her first, then began to wash her in the way of wolves. She licked the dirt and blood off of Arya's cheeks. Then, as Arya threw her arms around the Direwolf's neck and held her as tightly to her as she held life itself, she licked the tears off her cheeks.

For hours, as the smaller wolves dragged the bodies from the clearing and the day grew darker and colder, they sat together in the shadow of an oak, heads against each other. Together, once again.

Whole.

They didn't speak, though. They didn't need to. She simply lay curled up against Nymeria's side as the skies darkened overhead, getting up only briefly to set a fire and cook the meat that the wolves brought for them. The smaller beasts seemed to treat Nymeria like a queen, like divinity amongst mortals, bringing her the fruits of their hunts like they were paying homage or tribute. Nymeria in turn took most of an entire deer for herself, leaving as much as its mate, a hart with a mossy crown, for Arya. She told Nymeria that she wasn't that hungry and that she couldn't eat quite so much.

Nymeria told her back that she was little and skinny and needed to eat her fill. And with Nymeria's fur as her pillow, her breathing keeping her company through the night along with the great wolf pack that were there like attendants to their queen, Arya slept well for the first time in more than a year.

She even forgot to say the names before she fell asleep. When morning came she felt guilty about that, and repeated them all twice as she cleaned bags and her blades. "Joffrey. Cersei. Meryn Trant. Ilyn Payne. The Red Woman".

 _Who are all those humans?_ Nymeria's voice wasn't quite that in her mind, not words but sensations, feelings, images and memories blended together with the way the she-wolf hung her head and the way she moved her tail. _Those who need to die? Those who need to be eaten?_

"Yes". She brought out needle and cleaned the thin sword with a handful of leaves and moss, resuming as she went. "Berric Dondarrion. Thoros of Myr. Biter. The Mountain". There was one more name, but the Hound was dead now, so she did not include him. Her list felt strangely empty without his name. She stopped and looked up, seeing the grey clouds of winter gathering over her head up there in the lofty skies. Where those really all the names she had left? No, one more. "Jaqen H'gar". And another, for good measure. "The Kindly Man".

After she had said all of those names twice she looked to her saddlebags, discarding as much as she possibly could and then threw the remainder over Nymeria's back. A Direwolf's body and spine wasn't quite like that of a horse. They could carry less weight, but she was small, and Nymeria even encouraged it. As she sat up on her dear Direwolf's back the thoughts of those names were not far from her mind, though.

She had no idea what the Faceless Men wanted with her. But she had the feeling that whatever it was, they would not stop just because she had escaped them once. They would come for her again. But this time she would be with her family. The next time they came for her she would answer their blades in kind.

She was a Stark. No one would put her in a cage ever again.

"Come on, Nymeria" she clenched her hands into the thick fur of her friend's neck and held on tight as the Direwolf turned towards the North. "To Grey Wind and Ghost. To Jon. To Robb".

And panting softly, followed by half a hundred wolves, Nymeria set off to find her brothers.

* * *

 ** _Jon_**

Robb needed to cheer the bloody hell up.

"Tywin Lannister's got twenty-five thousand men sitting on King's Landing". Jon felt a little out of place on Robb's war council, standing in front of all the greater lords and commanders of his brother's gathered army just due east of the Westerland passes and the Golden Tooth. Like he was a boy too big for Father's boots, pretending to be Father. Still he stood at Robb's side at the head of the table with no other as Jon Stark.

His name. It was still strange to him, somehow.

"Another ten thousand scattered around the Crownlands, Crackclaw Point and the Northern Stormlands" Robb went on, noting the troop positions marked out on his map, a large section of the middle of Westeros marked out on it before him. "With the sea and the Blackwater secure after Stannis's defeat he won't starve. Supplies and allies from Essos will sustain him, at least for now. But if he commits too much of his forces against us he'll face an uprising. Winter is Coming, and the Smallfolk starve. We'll face some fifteen or twenty thousand men at once at worst if we don't assault his garrisons". He looked aside to Jon, who nodded back and cleared his throat.

"The best way forwards is through the Westerlands" he spoke up, and all the lords in their armours and their helmets looked now to him. Despite the nip on the air he sweated beneath his hair, the tresses on the top of his head bound up and laid down over the rest of his hair that flowed freely. Robb wore it the same way. Father had, too. He hoped they looked similar, at least. "We divide our forces. Lord Karstark, Lord Tully, Lords Umber and Mallister and Bracken, Chiefs Norrey and Flint - you will hold the Riverlands at Harrenhal. If Tywin comes your way, you cut out his heart and put his head on a spike".

"That leaves us ten thousand men after we've committed more than three fifths of our fighting men at the defensive line" Robb went on, taking over smoothly when Jon paused. "Enough to burn the Westerlands and sow their fields with salt, sulfur and skulls. As you move your men into the West, the ban on pillaging is lifted. I will have the head of any soldier that rapes, anyone that murders without cause - but see to it that our dead are paid their dues in Westerland gold".

"You're each given a region of the West to take and plunder as you will. The loot from these places will be your bannermen's and yours. None can contest it". Jon picked up a couple of pieces of wood, carved to look like the crests of the noble houses there selected, and placed them each on the regions of the Westerlands in turn. "Lord Roose, you have the Iron Hills and the Banefort. Lady Maege, you and Bear island have Crakehall. Lord Flint..."

And so it went on. By each piece that he placed and name that he uttered he sentenced thousands of people to poverty, suffering and death. But this was a war, a war the Westerlands had started, at least that was how most of them saw it. And now they would pay the price of their aggression.

And they would pay it a thousandfold.

"Lord Stark, your Grace" Mallister spoke up when he was done listing while Edmure Tully glared at Jon from beside him. The Warden of Rivers was not kindly inclined to the bastard of his goodbrother, or so it seemed. Jon weathered it. For most of the Northerners he had the blood of the Starks of Winterfell, and that was more than enough for them to at least heed him, if not respect him. "What about the entrances to the Riverlands? Crakehall along the Ocean Road and the Golden Tooth? With those gates and walls-"

"Walls cannot hold the Winter, Lord Jason" he answered, and in the gloom of the tent Gredtjon Umber's grin was nothing short of terrifying. "The night after the next the Golden Tooth falls. Then His Grace may ride south and attack Sarsfield, Greenfield and Silverhill from behind. After that His Grace and I will secure our southern flank and the alliance with the Reach".

"Any more questions?" Robb wondered, and for a while the silence lay heavy over the gathering. Everyone knew what was needed to be asked, but few of them were at ease enough to say it.

Finally it was Roose Bolton who raised his voice. "What about the Weirwood Riders?" He wondered, and Jon could see the corner of Robb's eye twitch.

"Lord Roren's volunteers ride with the Winterfell men to the Golden Tooth, and then on to Greenfield and Silverhill". When Robb remained silent about the issue Jon hurried to explain, and the nods around the room were at times relieved, at others frowning and dejected. But those men and women, they were too untested, too much of an unknown to let out of sight. And too powerful a weapon to leave in the hands of others. Robb dared not let them out of his sight and out onto the Westerlands. Only the Gods knew what would happen to the Septs and the people in them then.

Soon afterwards the council was dismissed, once everyone had been given directions and marching orders. Robb even held a little speech, about vengeance and glory and justice. It was quite inspired, leading to everyone cheering "the King in the North!" a couple of times, the chant rippling out through the rest of the camp like waves in a still pond suddenly disturbed. As the echoes of the cheers died down into the quiet of the late day twilight he and Robb stood all alone in that command tent but for Grey Wind and Ghost who lay curled up in the corner around each other. A Direwolf thing, no doubt. Lending warmth to each other in the deep winter North of the Wall. Like family. Like pack.

Like brothers.

He watched Robb in the dark as he stared down at the maps before him, his eyes affixed on Harrenhal's likeness and the gathering of wooden badges laid thereupon. "Only the most loyal of the houses put there" Robb mused in a near-whisper, more to himself than to Jon. "Friends at our back, or at least those who have lost sons to the Lannister. Maybe the lives of the Westermen will buy me the complete fealty of the rest of them. And-"

He said no more. Jon reached over and twatted him across the back of the head.

"Aow!" He clutched the top of his head and wheeled about, glaring at Jon with blood-shot eyes. "You bloody shite-!" He made to strike back, a familiar motion ingrained in the two since they had been boys playing at fighting back on the Winterfell courtyards, but Jon caught his wrist. "What the-?!"

"Stop pretending to be me". Robb seemed taken aback by his tone, but he needed to hear it. Especially since the Isle of Faces. "I'm the moody and brooding one. You're the one who smiles and who's fun and who's good with girls. Stop pretending to be me. You're making a boondoggle out of it". His brother blinked back at him, several times, and Jon sighed and explained why he had struck his king and thus committed high treason. "Come now, Robb. Ever since the Isle you've been brooding. Dark clouds over your head. You're the king. You're supposed to be one with the land. And no one wants to live in a place that is always miserable and raining". He paused and gave it a thought. "Except for Cotter Pyke. He volunteered for command of Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Fucking Gods, some men are-"

"You know what I saw on that island, Jon?" Robb wondered to him, the softness on his voice deceptive and dark. "What we all saw? I understand a fraction of it merely, but what I do" he bared his teeth and reached up to rub at his eyes with the back of his hand. "The trees absorb memories like sponges do water. And with them, minds. Souls. Every time we look into them, they look back out at us. All the knowledge within is set at a giant's fee, and I am not keen to pay the price".

"You might not have noticed" Jon replied slowly "but there is more to it than that. You can't see it, because it doesn't come as easily to you, but our power is stronger now. I understand what I am now. I understand what I can do. Imagine what Lyra can. What Roren can. Rymund is the strongest of all. And with the things we have done, the things we have shown them, more come every day to-"

Robb held up a hand. He wanted nothing of it. "Magic is like a flower, Jon. A rose that draws you in. Then it bleeds you dry with its thorns. A rose forever after. It shouldn't be courted like we have". He sighed again and looked back down to the map, turning so quickly that his cloak flapped about him. He always wore it nowadays, whether over his armour or his shirt. Like he needed the warmth where Jon needed none. "You've spent time with them even after Raventree Hall. I won't ever go through that again – Gods, if I needed that headache too – but you have. How many are there now?"

"Almost three hundred, even though it's been a scant fortnight since Raventree". Jon found the corner of his mouth curling upwards as he too turned to look back at the map, eyes trailing the eastern coastline until it vanished into his imagination, following it up into the North – and beyond. "Give a man proof of sorcery that he can't deny, and his world changes. He becomes willing to believe almost anything. When we made the dead tree bloom again people's hearts shifted. Most of them men who come to listen to Roren's sermons are Riverlanders, curious and disbelieving. After he shows them the visons of the trees, after he links their minds to the Weirwoods" he shrugged. That was another thing entirely. "Some of the others are wargs. Lyra and the others search them out, show them what they can do. All of them have bonded beasts within a couple of nights. Almost two-score of those".

"Scouting through the eyes of eagles and horses and wolves". Robb cocked his head to the side, a rouge strand of his red hair falling down before his eyes. "Once that would have appealed to me. The battles I could win… Magic is a dark thing, Jon" he looked over to his brother, and their gazes met. "I hardly understood any of what the Green Man told me, but I understood that at least".

"It's in us" he reached out and put his hand on Robb's shoulder, the steel and chainmail and padding lessening the sensation of the touch but not its meaning. "Both of us. It's in our blood. It's not some strange and foreign thing".

"There's a beast in the heart of every man". ´Robb shrugged off his touch, determined to pout. "Ours… ours has a thousand dead voices singing to it. Calling it to war. Don't trust the voices in your head, Jon. They're not our own".

"I trust you". That was all that really mattered, wasn't it? "I trust Ghost. I trust our wolves and our family. The rest can go plow themselves for all I care". He wet his lips and swallowed at the lump in his throat as he saw how the darkness hung over his brother. Over his King. "I remember what you feel when you look at her".

"The memories we experience when merging with the Weirwoods fade almost instantly – you should remember nothing". Only a Greenseer could hold on to them properly. Well, sometimes.

"And yet I do". That got his attention, and slowly he could see the expression on his brother's face change. "I saw it, when we brought the Raventree back to life. I felt it. Like the sunshine on my skin. Like a thick pelt around my shoulders on a cold night. Like the blood coursing through my veins, slaved to the beating of the mad drum that is my heart. I don't feel that, but I remember you doing so". Jon smiled at his brother. "You have that, Robb. Love, brother – love is the greatest magic of them all".

Slowly, ever so slowly, Robb began to smile back at him. "You sound like a bloody idiot saying that" he muttered wryly, scoffing at him from over his shoulder as he left the table of maps and headed for the rear of the tent where a carafe of wine was placed at his convenience. "All the songs say that, don't they? At least the ones that are the same as all the others".

"You agree with them, you misty-eyed halfwit" Jon mockingly shook his head at him as two cups were filled and they lifted them to drink. "To you, cheering your sorry self back up to high spirits!"

"And to having no other minds in our heads but our own. Also – shut up, you moping sod!" Robb added in the impromptu toast as they lifted their mugs to each other and then drank deeply. Jon's smile widened for an instant as he saw how the tension had lifted out of Robb's shoulders, fading into a general mirth and he looked down into the cup.

"It really does taste that much sweeter, despite being so sour". Robb grinned and drank again at Jon's comment.

"It's the triumph that makes it sweet". The young king paused and eyed the liquor suspiciously, furrowing his eyebrows together. "I can't just let it go, Jon. All those things said upon that cursed island – I need to know what it all meant. What it is all for. What the future holds".

"The minds of mortals are small and forgetful" he shrugged back, as it mattered little to him. Not anymore. "Leave the knowing of everything to the Gods and the trees. What matters is family, and the wars to come. Leave the future to the future. It will come to us soon enou-" Something was happening. Something strange. Ghost and Grey Wind lifted their heads from the ground and looked as one towards the opening of the tent and the south-east beyond. Through his link with Ghost he sensed a new presence. "Robb, do you feel that?"

"Aye, so I do" Robb nodded and put the cups back on the stand, reaching for the hilt of his burrowed sword. "Its wild, savage, cold – but familiar. What on earth-?" His eyes rolled into the back of his head and his shoulders slumped over for an instant before he returned to his own body and normalcy, a shocked expression on his face and a happiness he could not quite believe. "It's-"

"Your Grace!" Edric burst into the tent, polishing rag and leather-grease still in his hands as he stormed in just a head of a pair of guards and a sentry from the outer camp. Jon didn't listen to them, for he slanted into Ghost's mind and began to smirk once again. "The sentries! They, they say an army of wolves has marched into the camp! They're led by-"

"A girl riding a giant Direwolf?" Robb asked, the image planted in his mind from Grey Wind's to his already, and pale in the faces the four intruders nodded. The young king sighed. "Ah, blast. The chroniclers will have a jolly good time with this".

Jon opened his eyes and smiled. He looked to Robb. "Well" he shrugged "Arya always did like to make an entrance".

* * *

END

* * *

A/N: The last chapter was certainly polarising, wasn't it? Some hated it, some loved it. Well, I'm just going to stick to my planned outline and hope everything works out in the end.

Sorry for the long break since the last chapter. A combination of finals, a particularly busy social life, apathy, the… let's say "mixed" reaction to the last chapter, my other projects (both fanfiction and original) and me HATING the newest season of Game of Thornes bereaved me of my will to write on this for a while. But, just like summer, I'm back and better than ever!

Bearing that in mind, a few things need to be said:

I haven't written on this for a while, so my style in this chapter might be a little bit different from usual. Writing characters that are supposed to be medieval lends itself to a different voice than when writing modern characters. This will even out over the next few chapters. Hopefully.

Also, no Margaery in this chapter. I'm compensating for the Margaery overload that comes later in the story. After all, there's a massive war going on. Shit needs to get stabbed before there can be peace in the realm.

Lastly, by the riddles and the plans and the weird crap that doesn't make any sense – I'm not going to tell you what it's all about, okay? Figure it out on your own as the story goes on. That's what subtext is all about.

That being said, I hope that you have enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	13. Pillage and Conquer

Chapter Thirteen – Pillage and Conquer

* * *

 _ **Arya**_

She kept the Faceless Men from her brothers. It was better that way – or so she hoped.

"To see such horrors, at such a young age". She didn't trust the Maester though, the one they had called for once they had wrapped her in a cloak and taken her aside to safety and lonesomeness and she had told them as much as she could stand to. She didn't share anything about the Faceless Men, or Jaqen H'gar, just yet. She would have to tell them soon, but only when she knew more herself.

It would only serve to needlessly worry him. And her oldest brother looked like he had more than enough to worry about already.

Meanwhile, she flinched as the Maester examined a bruise on her cheek, one of many sustained there over the last months, marks and scars she hadn't even noiticed as time went on and she was covered in dirt. His fingers were cold. His eyes too, but not in a strong way. In a betrayed way – that was how he looked. Broken beneath his chains. "Physically she is a little malnourished and underfed, at a critical time in the development of children as they grow. But mentally, your Grace-"

"She's so fucked in the head from all the killing that murder seems normal to her?" Robb finished, glowering as he stared out over his maps, his armour about his body and his crown on his head. He looked so different, so much like Father that it almost hurt looking at him. Except for the crown. Somehow it seemed right on his head. Like it was a part of him that had always been missing even though she had never realised it. "Aren't all of us? Gods, when I lay my hands on Cersei and her gobshite son-" he was all but snarling, just like Grey Wind beside him. "Curse them! A pox on their House!"

"Calm your tits, your Grace" Jon muttered as he reached over and straightened out the collar of Arya's new cloak, given to her by Robb from off of his back. She had one just like it, back in King's Landing – if it was still there. "We'll get you a new one" Jon seemed to almost read her mind as he smiled down at her, and for an instant she was home again. "She bring you back?"

"I wasn't sure where you were" she told him, her voice so tiny in that vast tent as she looked over to Nymeria. Once the she-wolf had been convinced that she could stop fussing over her she had greeted her brothers sombrely, awkwardly, almost completely silent as the two went over her, sniffing and taking in her scent. Now she and Ghost were curled up, the bigger white beast protective around her as she slept, exhausted. Grey Wind had too been there, but once Nymeria fell asleep he rose and went to stand at Robb's side. He was too angry to sleep. Suddenly she wrinkled her nose. Arya sniffed the hem of the cloak that was close to her face, and over her own smell she could tell- "Something's… rosy".

"It's Robb's sweetheart" Jon told her and jerked his head the way of their brother, and she looked over to see Robb's ears go red. Robb – the smiling one, the one who always did what Father told him to, the one who told her to keep her chin tucked in when she and Bran wrestled – leading a war and being in love? Being a King? Somehow it didn't mesh. None of it fit together, but still he looked like the crown fitted on his head. Like he was a different person. "He stole a bottle of her perfume and keeps dousing the cloak in it when no one's looking".

"I do not!" Arya wanted to snicker at Robb's indignant expression as he looked over to the smirking Jon and gave him a venomous look, just like he had when they were boys. She wanted to. She felt in in her heart. But the smile wouldn't come to her. The laugh wouldn't come to her. Like her heart and mind were split from her body. Like she was made out of stone, and ever motion felt hard fraught. "She wore it for all but one night and two days! It's not my fault it still smells like her. Arya's still attuned to Nymeria's senses, and it's probably some woman-magic on Margaery's part!"

In response to that Jon chuckled aloud, the man she remembered as sombre now smiling much more than he had used to back at Winterfell. "'Woman-magic'?" he scoffed. "What are you, twelve?"

Robb narrowed his eyes, shot with red through all the blue – eyes just like Mother – at Jon. Had he been sleeping poorly? Satisfied in his incessant probing the Maester rose and bowed away from the Stark brothers, silently taking his leave of them and the tent. "I will bopp you across the bonce so hard you'll be seeing stars at noon tomorrow" Robb warned, and in response Jon mockingly raised his fists. "You know bloody well what I mean! Her scent should mark that cloak! I gave it to her!"

"Don't you two ever grow up?" Arya wondered, and they both looked over at her, smiling slightly. Robb abandoned his rage over the Lannisters and went over to crouch before the stool she had been placed on, looking her in the eyes from equal height.

"You're back with family. You're safe. Is it any wonder that I feel like a boy again?" He smiled at her as he took off his gauntlet and reached up to ruffle her hair almost like Jon would have done, his hand coming away oily and dirty from doing so amongst the jagged short tresses that hung half-way to her shoulders by then. "Mother's going to have a fit" he muttered, and Arya flinched in spite of herself. "You miss her, don't you?" She looked him eyes for a long time before she could manage to nod, and it was a quick, jagged motion. "Me and Jon will ride South to see her soon. In a week or so. Do you want to send you ahead to her?"

"I'll tell Edric to go summon Maege and the Mormont women" Jon said and went towards the opening of the tent, peaking his head out of the woollen flaps and speaking in hushed words as Robb began to scowl when Arya shook her head. It was hard to tell him, but somehow… somehow she managed.

"I want to fight". Now it was Robb's turn to flinch and be taken aback, and she made a face. It would be just like it had been with Father, wouldn't it? He'd not let her do anything that she could do. Anything she was good at. "I was there when they lopped his head off". Their smiles faded, and both of them turned to her, steel in their eyes, black or blue but still the same. "I want to kill them all. I want them to look me in the eyes as I cut their hearts out and eat them". From aside Nymeria rose her head from her torpor and looked to Grey Wind as if challenging him. "I'm not a lady".

"I bloody well know that" Robb nodded back at her. "You warg even easier than Jon, if Nymeria is to judge even impartially. And I've seen your weapons. All well used". He looked aside to the small pile where most of her saddlebags and things had been dropped when they had managed to convince Nymeria to simmer down and for no one to attack the wolves that had massed on the grounds between the tents of the Winterfell contingent of the army. "How many blades do you have?"

"Not counting Needle and arrowheads? Six". She didn't need to hesitate at all, and Jon gave her a look over a raised eyebrow. "Sometimes you lose them. They get stuck in bone or in some cunt's spleen or break. Also, when someone comes at you in a run it's best to throw them, because they're bigger than me. Into the eye or the balls, or the-"

"Mother's going to have a fit, hearing you speak like that" Robb breathed out hard and traded a look with Jon, who merely shrugged. "Arya, there are fighting women in my army" he told her as he reached out and took both her hands in his own. "I'm not holding you back because you're a girl. But the battlefield is no place for an eleven years old bairn. If you go into a fight, you stay back with either Jon or me, you understand? Be careful! And use that bow of yours. Promise me!"

"If I promise" she replied "does that mean that I get to kill Lannisters?" Reluctantly, hesitantly, he nodded in the affirmative, and somehow she found that she could smile at that. "I promise I'll be good and shoot the bow. You want to see it?"

"Sure" he nodded at her, and she rose from her seat and handed his cloak back to him before she went over to her pile, almost skipping in eagerness as Robb went back to being Robb the King and not Brother Robb. "You'll have to sleep with the Direwolves tonight. Jon's tent, next to mine. I'll make the other arrangements. I'll buy the things you might need from Lady Maege so you can have your own things and tent after tonight. Her youngest is your age".

"Lyanna, the one with the same name as aunt Lyanna?" Arya wondered as she retrieved her bow and pulled it out of its hide casing, stringing it with practiced ease but not without struggled, the weapon made for someone much larger and thicker of arm than her. "See, it's Dothraki, isn't it? I think the weather is making a mess with the glue and the ligaments, though. I, uh, accidentally put it in a river. Or two". She placed it on the table atop of the maps, some little wooden disks falling off the table when she did so. She looked them over as they landed by her feet. They were carved with – _eh, who cares?_ "It's hard using it, but if it isn't as heavy on the draw-"

"You wouldn't have any punching power" Robb finished for her over her shoulder. "Short. Stumpy. Kind of like you. Oi, Jon – you're the archer of the lot. What say you?"

"May I?" When Arya nodded back up at him he took it up and held it with practiced hands, pulling back the string to anchor it under his chin, grunting a little when it made it all the way. "The draw stacks like nothing else. Fairly heavy, though. Solid aiming. Can probably punch through a breastplate easily. A skilled company with these bows can make crossbowmen obsolete".

"And the Dothraki use them from horseback". Robb declined it when Jon slowly had let the string back – slowly, as to avoid dry loosing and not damage the arms any more than they had been by nature already – by raising his hand. "I'm glad those are on the far side of the Narrow Sea. Wouldn't want to face those pricks in the South". Arya remembered that Robb had never been that great with the bow. Good with the sword, sure, and at the horseback lance he had thrown everyone out of the saddle. Even Rodrick and Harwyn, their old Master of Horse. Even Father.

"Oh?" Jon asked as he helped Arya unstring the bow and put it back in its covering, giving Jon a long look. "What makes you so confident to face them in the North, your Grace? North or South, would it make any difference?"

"North or South, east or west – war is the same everywhere". King Robb reached up and pulled at the straps of his armour even as he headed for the stand in the corner and poured wine into three pewter cups from out of an ornate carafe, a gaudy thing a great deal unlike something Brother Robb would have ever used. "It's not about how many men you have or how fierce they are. It's about how many you can use well. How well you feed them. How warm you keep them. What would the Dothraki do in a Northern winter, when their horses starve and they freeze to death in their leathers?" Jon, lacking in answer, inclined his head as Robb brought back the cups, handing one to Jon and one to Arya. "It's to help you sleep" he offered with a smile. "Don't tell Mother".

Arya took the cup and smelled it, wrinkling her nose at the stinging in her nostrils. She held it out to Nymeria, who sniffed it before she huffed, to which Arya shrugged and sipped. She almost spat it back out and made a face at Robb. "It's sour".

"It's stolen from the stores of a Lannister scout captain" Robb informed her, and she tried it again with that in mind. Taken from a Lannister, from those prancing ponces in crimson armour – that actually made it taste far better. "I knew you'd feel the same way" he chuckled before he looked over to Jon. "Anyway, I've been speaking to some of the Narrow Sea lords about military matters in Essos. It never hurts to know, in case that ornery housecat Tywin brings some over with his bottomless reserves of gold. Greatjon knows a fair bit about Skagos and Norvos, but the Boltons had a trade monopoly on Braavosi goods before Torrhen knelt. Lord Roose knows a fair bit about Braavos and its Water Dancers, in addition to the free cities. Probably where he buys all his bloody hippocras".

"If you can trust anything the man says" Jon muttered back and drank, "He unnerves me. It's the eyes, I think". He paused and seemed to muse on something. "Looks like those of a damn Other, so they do". Arya listened quietly as the two spoke back and forth, speaking about unfamiliar things in an all too achingly familiar fashion. For a long while they stayed like so, her brothers trying to prod her out of her shell ever so gently. She was quite aware of what they were doing, but somehow she couldn't respond. Her shell had grown up hard around her, and no cracks would come in it. No matter how they tried they couldn't break through, and she felt like she was drowning in her skin.

Jon seemed happy, less brooding – and purposeful, somehow. Like he now knew the meaning of his life better than he had before. Robb looked like the coldness that had always been in him had been brought to the surface by the crown on his head, but determined to defend his visions of the future to the death by the blood of entire continents.

And she… she had probably changed the most of all of them. Quietly she wondered how Rickon was. How Bran. How even Sansa was doing.

Maege Morment came around soon, her daughters five in tow excepting the two that had remained on Bear Island, and after some bluster and mild chastising from the She-Bear aimed towards Robb – King be damned, no lass her age should be let around looking like that and kept hungry – she was whisked away with Nymeria, Ghost and Grey Wind close in tow. She was washed, fed, and tucked in under warm blankets in Jon's tent surrounded by the fur of the three mighty beasts, protecting her as they clutched around her. As they fell asleep their dreams began to inflict on her waking mind, but she would not let herself drift.

An hour later, when Jon was soundly asleep, she crept out of her bed and headed towards the north of the camp and the dark banners flying over the maroon and pink tents there.

The banners that had the Flayed Man on them.

* * *

 ** _Jon_**

From above he saw on eyes in the night how the torches of the sentries at the walls began to dip. Noting it to himself he let out a quiet sound in the night, a screech almost inaudible to human ears.

And then he shot back into his human form and threw open his eyes, his allotted warriors taking up their arms and rising around him. He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes again, reaching out to Ghost instead of one of the falcons that roosted on the cliffs and rocky shelves overlooking the Golden Tooth. That connection was ingrained much deeper, easier to hold on to. It was like threads in his mind, arrayed before him, and while some were tenuous and fragile – his horse, Alliser, the charger he had taken as his own after Saltpans, and those falcons he had reached out to ever during the days as they waited for the opportune moment to strike came – some were much stronger. The link with Ghost was less like a string or even a rope. It was a chain, unbreakable, and the connection was easy to follow. He went into Ghost's mind, the Direwolf back with the siegebreaker contingent of the main army, for an instant to speak with Grey Wind, who would in turn speak to Robb.

He didn't even have to light a torch and hold up a mirror surface to send his signal to his brother. He could do it in utter silence. The defenders of the Golden Tooth, liegemen of House Lannister and House Lefford, would have no warning when he fell upon them like shadows bearing steel.

"All of you got your ropes?" He checked them all, giving them one last once over before he stood off of the ground and stretched towards the sky to limber up his back. Down to a man all of the two dozen fighters he brought with him wore dark leathers and light armour all painted in black and grey splotches. In the dark that they stood in they seemed almost like shadows only, melding and unmelding with the rocks and the night with every motion, even the steel of their bared swords and knives and axes painted black. One last thing was missing from him though, unlike the others.

Roren Neversleep, his robes shirked for only his lightest armour and mail and a cowl drawn before his face, stopped in front of him in the moonless dark and reached into the bowl in his right hand with the tips of his fingers. "This marks your bravery, young warrior" he intoned in a whisper from some ancient spell the Weirwoods had taught him as more than half of the band around him watched in reverent silence. Cold and thick Jon could feel the paint as it was slattered onto his face. "May the Ancestors hold their shields above you. May the Gods keep you whole. May Vengeance make true your sword".

As the paint began to dry within moments Jon spoke aloud the response with the rest of them, hardly a whisper but still loud when they all voiced it as once. "My life for my kin and the King in the North". The paint, from water and Weirwood paste, would have been made from many crushed pigments in the past, at least according to Roren. Red and yellow from madder and weld, maroon from umber, green from cave moss and acorns, blue from woad – coloured in ancient times to denote a clan or a family that they belonged to or swore allegiance to. This paint had been coloured with nothing but coal, and it made them faceless in the night.

Jon looked around. Most of them were wargs and skinchangers, fresh from the minds of their bonded animals and thus sharp in their senses and alert. Other than those two dozen Lyra, Smalljon Umber, Roren, Rymund the Screech, Maester Ebbert and Drustan had come with him, as had Hos Blackwood and Arya. All of them looked to him for orders. Silently he nodded to them and turned about, looking in at the bend. He hefted longclaw in his hand, Valyrian steel painted black, and began the silent march of a stalk towards the walls of the Golden Tooth.

Since time immemorial and the vaguely remembered histories of the Andal Conquest of Westeros the Golden Tooth had stood indomitable in the passes between the west and the east. A great fortress that served as the outpost of the Westerlands to defend against the Riverlands, it was a huge thing of high walls in rings, outer walls and inner walls and then the walls of the innermost citadel and its towers, outcroppings and towers breaking up the buttresses at regular intervals. Its outer courtyard, the area between its inner walls and its outer walls, was lined with stables and barracks and mustering grounds and granaries filled to the brim, wells dotting the earth grounds stomped solid by the marching of thousands of feet all throughout history. For seven thousand years and more House Lefford had held it against all invaders. And now Jon was meant to take the keep and overpower its garrison with thirty men.

The plan had been Robb's creation. Smalljon and Jon had helped, and Maester Ebbert had provided some insight, but beyond that it was the child of Robb's mind only. It had been necessary to prod him a little to shirk his suspicions and mistrusts about sorceries, even for a single night, but it had been done. Robb had a gift for gambits, it seemed. Especially of the martial kind.

Jon just hoped that his luck bore with him.

As they closer they darted from crag to crag along the rocky walls to their left on their way, always out of sight from the defenders by meticulous watch and planning. An advance that would have taken a short time in the daylight took the better part of an hour as they skulked, but by one of the last of the few covers on that cleared ground Jon gestured Arya and Lyra to his side. He looked to Lyra, who closed her eyes a hint before they rolled far into the back of her head to show nothing but white in the night. She was silent for a good long while before she awoke from the trance and nodded. She had left her bonded creature, a bear rescued from the ruins of Harrenhal and the torture of the Lannister mercenaries, back at the camp. Bears were hardly suited for stealth, but she was one of the best Wargs he knew of. He had needed her help that night.

She looked to Arya and held up three fingers before she marked places on the wall in turn by a pointed finger. Jon had made sure that they made their approach in the middle-to late part of a guard shift, to make their opponents all the more sleepish and easy to defeat in turn. Arya nodded back at the older woman and drew and arrow from her quiver, nocking it against the string of her Dothraki bow. She looked to Jon, and he signalled the continued advance.

Only in the shadow of the walls did Arya down the sentries on top of them. One crumpled into a heap that drew the others' attention with a thud, but the next two toppled in over the outside of the walls, all of them with arrows through their necks. Arya had always been good with the bow when they were young, though not as good as he was. Now, he suspected, that she might even be better than he was. There was not delay at all when she drew back her bowstring and fired, no hesitation or aiming at all. It was almost like sorcery in how unerringly deadly she was.

Then came Jon's part of it all. When they stood just under the precipice of the wall, Lyra flitting in and out of the mind of the falcon on the cliffs that she had tenuously bonded with to make sure that Arya and Tam of Barrowton could down any patrolling guardsmen, Jon signalled Drustan, the Flint clansmen and held out his hand. By Ebbert's hand a wicked metal hook was placed in it, tri-pronged and stern, its one end attached to a long coil of rope unwound from around the Maester's midriff and falling to the ground. Jon stepped away from the wall with the Flints and Drustan as they swung the hooks through the air and rapidly increasing speed, letting them out at the top of the arcs to fly high in the air. All the hooks stuck their ends firmly over the buttresses of the wall with a soft ring of steel, and for a few moments none of them moved, looking to Lyra. In the end she turned her eyes forwards again, and so Jon closed his hand into a fist and then made a motion upwards. He had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but the point came across anyway.

And so they started their ascent. The four men that ascended first – Drustan and the three Flint clansmen including the one that took over for Jon – each had rolls of rope around their bodies, rolls they would unfurl and throw down once they came to the top to add to the ascent of the others. Robb looked the band over as they looked up, lingering for a second on Ebbert. He had his doubts about the man and of his physical attributes, but the Maester had told him that he would be no burden that night. _I was born at Highpoint. My brothers taught me how to climb_. Jon forced the concerns from his mind and turned for the wall, gripping the uneven stone and mortar with his hands. No time to doubt. No time to hesitate.

And so he climbed the walls without the need for a rope while his warriors ascended alongside him and each other. The almost sheer rock was mortifying to almost anyone else, but not to him. And the height did nothing to him at all. He had climbed far worse things in his life, and the bricks of that wall were stone and not ice. It was easy enough in comparison to that.

As soon as he crested the far side it almost went to shite, though. A patrolling guard came around the corner of the towerhouse of the guard barracks atop the wall, his comrades sleeping within and saw the rest of them climb the walls. He opened his mouth and lowered his spear, making to shout, but Jon who was closer and hidden came onto him from his side and clamped his hand to the Westerland's soldier's lower face.

The man struggled to scream against his hand, but his cries were muffled into near-nothingness by his hand and his glove. Jon raised Longclaw to point the steel tip to the soldier's neck, ready to thrust through. Against the screams he put his mouth close to the man's ear as if to shush him, but instead the words he had said that other night when he first told war council his plan came to him. As the men atop the wall regrouped and watched him he whispered.

"Walls cannot hold the Winter". Then he thrust true and through, cutting through the man's windpipe and silencing his screams forever before he marched over and dumped to corpse onto the far side of the wall. As he went back to the gathering he gave Lyra a hard look, and she stared back defiantly. Oh, it wasn't her fault. Falcons were trixy creatures with no grasp at all on the concept of concentration. Still- he bared his teeth as his inner self and nodded to the rest of them before he sent one more signal to Grey Wind and Robb by way of Ghost. When he opened his eyes again Roren had taken Jon's bow off his back and handed it on to him fully stringed, Rymund handing out special arrows to the lot of the archers amongst them.

That had been Ebbert's contribution. A special oil that burned easily, along with a few small tricks to a flint and steel that sparked easily. The bundles on their arrows, bound just south of their arrowheads, were set ablaze equally easily by it, and they found their pre-chosen targets readily: the two barracks, the stables and the kennels, the thatched spots over the holes in the roof of the main house, and the wooden roof of the castle sept. The eyes of birds provided no small amount of the best scouting Jon had ever experienced. On his signal they all loosened, and within moments spots of fire were lighting up the moonless clouded night as the castle courtyard caught ablaze.

The torches came next. As Arya took purchase on the walls with Tam, Lyra and Hos Drustan, Rymund and Roren followed Jon the gatehouse. The rest went with Smalljon to break some heads and cause some violence. More importantly, to cause some chaos and confusion. And they had to be quick about it. They had little time until the castle woke up and Robb was already on his way.

They hit upon another snag within mere moments. The door to the gatehouse was locked. Drustan and Jon broke it open with the flat of their swords in the cracks, the other two storming in while the splinters still flew through the air. The six men keeping guard within were mostly asleep but for one. Unfortunately that one managed to get out a shout before Drustan ran his chest through with the sword. As the clamour rose outside, shouts and screams rising along with the alarm, the lone vigilant watchman's body crashed to the ground, Drustan's sword stuck in his ribs.

"Shite! Leave him!" Jon shouted and ran for the winch controlling the chains that ran down the walls to one side of the gatehouse, an exact likeness in look and purpose on the other side of the room. "Raise these sodding things!" he shouted at them, and the chains groaned as they raised the portcullises on either side of the wooden main gate. The winches stopped in their final positions with a metal clang, and by the swords of the Westermen in the gatehouse that they shoved into the winches the mechanisms broke and were immoveable. Drustan took the axe off his hip and drew his knife in his other hand as they gathered themselves. For a few moments they dared to rest.

But no more. There was a battle outside, and Jon was eager to get there. His sister was there. At first he hadn't wanted to bring her, as she was little, young, and Arya, his little sister. But she had learned of the plan, somehow, and badgered him into taking her with him. He had said he would, if only to make her stop, if she managed to beat him in an archery contest.

Apparently she had practiced quite a bit. He was almost as surprised then as he was miffed.

Arya, as it was becoming more apparent with every passing moment, could take care of herself. While Lyra and Hos began to assault the gate with their axes, not merely bent on opening it but breaking it and preventing it from closing, Arya and Tam held watch on the wall on either side of the gatehouse, Arya firing arrow after arrow into the unsteady stream of people emerging from the main gates of the inner courtyard, bleary eyed and in their shirts to fight a fire but met with Northern steel. Jon caught sight of a few spots of colours, shirts and tunics and dresses – but Arya shot them too. Bloodthirsty she was, but it did them no harm in the moment. The walls were held, and with the three at his back Jon ran for the far steps of the stair that led down to the courtyard. Through the sounds of the battle the thudding of Hos's axe against the timber of the gate was growing louder.

At the bottom of the stairs ten Lannister men in lamellar red were running for the gate before they caught sight of the four of them and turned to face them, swords and partisans in hand. Jon flew into them first, challenging two of the men at arms on his own, while Roren charged another and Drustan stood alone against a knight in heavy plate with axe and dagger in hand. The remaining five men and the other Westerlander knight faced only one man – Rymund.

Once Rymund the Rhymer, now Rymund the Screech. Wide eyed and insane he stood before them, shoulders heaving with his every breath, and when they came for him to kill he threw his head towards the clouded-over heavens and screamed.

Roren, who had pretended to understand it, and Ebbert, who did understand but lacked the simple words to explain it, had tried to make Jon understand what it was exactly that Rymund did when he let loose his shrill howl, a sound that should by all right make the ears bleed and glass shatter but did neither. It was something about the ability of a Skinchanger to touch the minds of animals that could, with great strength and foreboding of forbiddance, touch the minds of men. How it wasn't a bond but a fleeting touch, a caress instead of a seizure of the mind. How some Wargs by the medium of their voice could affect others through that, instil through song thoughts and commands and emotions. But Rymund's voice had been shattered by the Gods. He had nothing to sing to the world.

Nothing but agony and hopelessness, anyway.

His howl was a wordless, owl-like screech, and while the sound hurt Jon's ears just a little it wasn't targeted at him. Instead the men attacking Rymund, and the enemies standing the closest to him, screamed too as the pain of the scream, intent and thought and power inflicting torture by the raising of his voice, and clutching their heads and their ears and clawing at their throats and eyes they fell to the ground, screaming as well. Horror went through them, ripping their sanities apart with all the nightmares that Rymund had witnessed by the power of the Gods and the Weirwoods.

It was a dark sorcery, Ebbert had explained, struggling for words as he too sorted through the memories that the Weirwoods had inflicted on him. Old and horrible. In the better times of old it had been banned under the penalty of death, but these were new times. War times. No sorcery was too foul in Jon's eyes. They needed to win.

The power went out of Rymund quickly, the scream new to him and so hurting only some of the eight enemies closest to him and only for a little while. Jon dealt with three men even as another five came rushing out of the burning barracks, their armours scarcely half made up and chamber pots in their hands as they dashed for the wells, but when they saw the intruders they raised alarm and turned about towards them. Drustan killed one with a thrown axe before he took the castle-forged sword out of the hand of the knight he had killed with a blade to the skull through the slits in his visor. Roren downed another with his sword before he caught the lower edge of the shield of another as they crippled and slammed its upper edge into the throat of the guard holding it, stealing it off his arm. Jon turned towards another and cut his hands off around the wrist before trading blows with the knight.

In the end he got the better of that armoured brute wearing the blue surcoat of House Lefford. When the knight, swinging his Morningstar in a wild and brutal arch, overextended himself and raised his arm to block, Jon took advantage of the fact that Longclaw was a hand-and-a-half sword. He smashed the shield aside with a double handed slash before he took hold of it and yanked it with his right hand as his left stabbed forward in the opening there revealed, sinking deep into the knight's armpit. The knight stumbled back, dying, bring Jon with him, and he had just enough time to turn about and see a Lannister soldier stab for his stomach with a sword of shimmering steel. For a moment, Jon thought that he was a dead man for certain.

A dagger whistled through the air over his shoulder and imbedded itself in the eye of the fencer – an odd dagger with a dark brown hilt of discoloured linen. He gripped it and pulled it out by the weight of the corpse as it slumped to the ground with a thud, and he looked behind him to see Arya, Needle in one hand with her other outstretched from the throwing, standing over a dead Lefford man with blood dripping from her thin sword. Robb held up the knife – leaf-thin, oddly weighed, not made for throwing, hooked on one end. A skinning knife of some sort. Somehow it seemed familiar-

He ignored that thought in his mind for now. As Arya ran down the steps to his side, her quiver empty on her back and her bow discarded somewhere he returned the knife to her before he gave her a nod. To her, and the others. That done they set their sights on the gate and made to hurry over there, passing by only a few of the confused and disoriented Lannister men.

In the chaos almost no one had noticed how Hos Blackwood had started working his axe on the double gates of the Golden Tooth gate. The long axe's runes seemed to burn black in the darkness, and each swing seemed as heavy to the young man as lifting a mountain yet still they fell with thunderous force. As they got there the gates flew open, and Lyra, who had been defending him, dashed into the darkness beyond, sitting down on the ground just before the outermost gate. "Hold them at the entrance!" she shouted as Jon looked up at the stone of the vaulted arch about him and the murderholes there. Tam and Mayka were there, faces haggard as they had barricaded the shattered door of the gatehouse as well as they could have, and they nodded back at him.

One gate was down, the other on its way. Hopefully Hos's mighty axe could make short work of it and Lyra's and Smalljon's diversions would go as planned. Ahead, out in the darkness as Lyra skinchanged, the stables and kennels burst open when hounds and horses, driven by human intelligence and panic, escaped their pens and boxes. In a madness driven by fire and the thought Lyra planted in them they turned on their masters, causing enough of a distracting as the beasts charged through the gates in the second wall to the inner courtyard that Smalljon's men had the chance to make it out of their own battles more or less unharmed.

Through the mass of soldiers Smalljon's band came, less of four men but otherwise whole and mostly unwounded beneath all of the blood. The Umber heir himself was leading the charge, and he huffed as he came up to the panting and doubled-over Hos Blackwood by the last unbroken gate door, the weathered old wood almost nothing but splinters after a dozen-or-so swings with sorcerous axe. "Lord Blackwood" he asked as his warriors got behind the line of defence that Jon headed. "Might I do the honours?" Hos nodded, and so Smalljon raised his foot and kicked the gate with all his might. The splintered wood could not hold his strength, and it crashed to the ground. Jon moved back through the line and pushed Ebbert forth to take his place, closing his eyes.

The Direwolves were linked together, bonded to each other just like he was to Ghost. They could feel each other's presence over great distances and hear each other howl from half a world away. What Jon was doing was a simple thing, really, taking advantage of that link. Through Ghost he could speak to Grey Wind, and when Robb's mind was linked with Grey Wind's… He chased that link like a famished wolf after a rabbit, and the darkness closed in on him before he found himself on all four, running, panting and lifting his head to the wind to smell horses and men and fear and blood. _The Gates have fallen_ , he spoke through the link with great effort, his own body jerking and convulsing where it was propped up against the ach of the portcullis. He hungered for blood and fresh meat. _They wait to die_.

The answer came almost instantly, words burning with rage and starvation and thirst in his head, short and more sensation than thought. _We come_.

Jon's eyes shot open, and on shaking legs he rose to pull back the pale-faced and scratched Ebbert back into the line as he retook his old place in the defensive formation. The Maester was doing well for himself, especially considering his meekness and the blood on his blade, but he was weakening. They were running out of time. Still, it didn't matter.

"Winter is Coming!" Jon roared to his own and to his enemies in equal measure as he leapt into the fray, Longclaw a flurry of steel before him. Valyrian steel met common arms and sliced through sword and armour and man like a knife through parchment.

For a little while he was surrounded on all sides by Lannister men before Hos and Smalljon followed after, the Blackwood Lord howling like a demon of the Seven Hells. After followed Rymund, his scream downing a whole swath of the first line in mind-shredding agony.

"Hold!" Smalljon shouted and held his axe low before him, his eyes burning in the night as the Westermen gathered before him in close ranks, and Jon took to his one side while Roren and Lyra took his other. "All as one! One as all! Side by side, we'll kill 'em all! The King in the North!"

"The King in the North!" Jon shouted along with the others. He heard a smaller voice joining in it too, for the first time, and he glanced aside to see that Arya was shouting it along with the others, just like he had. She looked up at him and grinned. No, snarled. There was hardly anything human about her expression. And he smiled back at her the very same way as outside the walls the howling began to rise. A song of wolves as they ran side by side with horses. A single mournful tone sounded out above it all, reverberating out from an aurochs horn. Beside Jon Arya and the Flint men began to laugh, as Rymund forced out another shrill cry of pain most incarnate.

They slashed through the sides, shoulder to shoulder as they fought, and made to hug the walls and the buildings of the outer courtyard, as if they were letting themselves be pushed into corners even as they stared death right in the eye in the guise of Lannister men. Only a little longer, Jon thought as he pulled Lyra and Arya with him up the stairs to the walls, all of them stumbling and haggard with a supreme lack of energy. As he struck one Lannister man with the flat of his blade over the helmet and toppled him over the wall right into a gathering formation of Lefford spearmen below he could hear the thundering of hooves. At first in the distance, but then closer. And closer.

And then He was there.

Robb was the first in through the gates of the Golden Tooth as the moonlight broke through the cloud cover overhead, bathing him and his armoured horse in a steel glow that made him appear as a figure out of some fey story of heroes. The three Direwolves followed him, gathering behind him as he halted his steed in the open of the courtyard. His cloak streamed like the banner of House Stark behind him, and the Lannister men fell back from him, huddling and scrambling away as he raised his sword to the skies. His horse pranced and whinnied, and the helmet on his head lent a boon to his voice.

"The North Remembers!" he roared as Grey Wind and Nymeria howled to the moon, and the Northern cavalry burst through the broken gates of the Golden Tooth, following their king.

Robar Royce in his armour of burnished bronze, Marq Piper with his Valyrian steel sword held high, Maege Mormont with the bear hide armour around her broad shoulders and her mace in hand, Roose Bolton with his grey plate armour with rondels of screaming human faces, Gendry of Hollow Hill with his bullshead helmet, Dacey Morment with her swords, Harwyn of Winterfell, Ser Janas Perryn, Darrick Overton, Patrek, Owen, Lyn, rider after rider with weapons in hands until their number seemed beyond counting. They flooded onto the outer courtyard of the castle and smashed through the shoddy and makeshift Westerlander lines, a group of Valemen riders under the command of Robar Royce riding hard for the gates of the inner courtyard to get within them before the defenders shut them tight. Jon and Arya watched from the walls as the Lannister garrison was flushed away before their horses, and as they sagged down on the steps leading up to the walls, out of the way and out of sight, they leaned on each other and smiled.

It would take hours before all the Lannister garrison was driven off, captured or slain, and hard fighting before the inner courtyard was taken and the citadel of the castle surrendered. Until then Jon and Arya and Lyra, the last sleeping in an exhausted torpor, sat out of the way and listened to the battle cries of Robb's army.

"Eat their hearts!" came from the Valemen. "Blood and skulls!" and "Feel our blades!" came from the Bolton levy. "The Sun in the North!" came from the Karstark cavalry and the grey shore and Grey Hills men. "All chains but one!" from the Umber riders, along with shouts in the half-forgotten tongue of the First Men. "Honour and Glory!" from the Riverland knights. But most of all:

"Stark! For Stark and the Gods!" And the most often:

"The King in the North!"

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

"Well then" he furrowed his brow as he looked down on the accounts before him while his mercantile attendants looked at him expectantly. "I'm bloody rich. Perfect. Now what?"

Four days after their victory at the Golden Tooth and already things had gone well for him. Sarsfield, a walled town halfway between the Golden Tooth and the village of Oxcross, had fallen the night before with little struggle, and now he was up in the Arrowhead citadel of the keep of House Sarsfield, the House that had ruled it before then thrown into the deep dungeons and put under Stark guard. The keep was comfortable, he noted, opulently decorated with expensive mats and green and verdant tapestries and banners and drapes all over. The only thing that was more frequent than the bloody colour green was all the sodding gold and silver. So many riches just laying about, more than he had ever seen in his entire life. The tables of the great hall had been laid heavy with jewellery and coin and fine things, and before his place at the seat of honour he could count almost three dozen scribes hard at work taking account of it all.

"Your Grace" Maester… Fatty the Fat or something, he couldn't bloody well remember all their names, prodded him from opposite him, the corpulent Maester having once served House Lefford but eager now to serve the one who was actually winning the war. "As I am given to understand, you have divided up the Westerlands in regions and assigned the resources of those regions for your lords to take as they see fit. While the wealth taken from Lannisport shall be divided equally amongst the Lords remaining at your garrisons in the Riverlands the riches of Sarsfield and the Golden Tooth fall to you. Have you considered what to do with the gold of Casterly Rock, your Grace?"

"Make a giant cock and balls of solid gold in the middle of Wintertown's grand square?" he grumbled, rubbing his eyes at the tedious matters before him. All his warriors were off pacifying the townsfolk or patrolling or seeing to their wounds, and so he was left alone with a lot of guards and a gaggle of Maesters and scribes. And he was bored out of his mind by all their sodding parchments and numbers. "Build a fleet? Establish a Stark bank? Buy most of fucking Volantis? I don't bloody know. Give me the list, man" he muttered and yanked the parchment out of the Maester's hand, him and his two attendant aides grovelling like snivelling pigs before him. "I'll look at it myself".

"Certainly, my L-" he stuttered and sweated when Robb rose his eyes from the list and gave the Maester the most savage glare he could muster. "Your Grace" he corrected himself and swallowed hard. _Gods, he's all but soiling his damn britches_. "We were wondering-"

"You haven't got the luxury to wonder, Maester Farththing". Robb stifled a grin at their expense as he saw how they jumped at the sound of that voice. From the stairs to the west of the hall came Ebbert, and though he still wore the chains around his neck he was certainly not a Maester. No one even called him that anymore, no one except for Arya. "Resume the accounting. I will tend to the matters of transporting it". Staring at him, white or reddening in the face, the three turned on their heels and went back to their labouts, and Robb looked up at the former son of House Whitehall.

Ebbert had shed his robes for the last time the morning after the Taking of the Tooth, as the bards were already calling it, trading them for britches and a leather armour the same as any other northern infantryman with that odd sword at his hip shoved into a broad black belt and a shield on his back. He looked nothing like a Maester in it, despite his chains. "Thanks for chasing them off. Blasted Gods, man, how could you stand living with men like that at the Citadel?"

"By being like them, your Grace" he offered with an incline of the head as he went to stand at Robb's side, climbing the steps up the magnificent dais of the absurdly gaudy hall. It really was nothing like Winterfell. It was even smaller. What were you using your wealth for if you didn't build your castle bigger? "I've made the arrangements. Owen is sending as many wagons as he can spare from the Golden Tooth. The vaults beneath the citadel can hold your new wealth for as long as you see fit".

"No wonder the Lannisters are such bloody pricks all the time" Robb shook his head wryly as he counted the zeroes after the numbers on the paper and reached back up to rub his eyes. "I'd be a cock about things too if I had this much coin up my arse". It really was quite excessive. Bordering on actually bodily sickening. "I can build all the Winterfell towers back up with this" he muttered before he looked up to Ebbert and handed the list on to him. "Have words with some smiths in Oldtown or Highgarden, places with good forges that will trade with us. I want weapons made for Royce, Smalljon and Loras Tyrell. And four suits of armour. For my siblings".

"Lady Arya's getting one? I assume so because of your lack of thought for yourself, your Grace" Ebbert offered, and Robb nodded back at him. "Arya's armour best made for a full-grown woman, then. She'll grow up. Somewhere close to your lady mother's measurements, your Grace. Your brother's should be measured after you, except for Lord Jon". He paused in his musings and stopped. "Your trueborn brother, Brandon. Your Grace, he is unlikely to ever grow big enough to have a use for it. Even if he did, it would be-"

"I can talk to animals, Ebbert, and link my thoughts and soul to magic trees". Ebbert made a face before he bowed his head in acceptance before that argument. "My brother was damaged by his fall. But there is sorcery in the world now, returning to it. Even the dead walk by it. Why shouldn't my brother be able to?" He rubbed his eyes again before he pinched the bridge of his nose in thought. "I want you to use some of that gold to get me healers. Sorcerers, herbalists, Maesters – I care not. As long as they can make my brother whole. Send word to your friends at the Citadel". He then changed his tone, seeing the hopeless look on Ebbert's face. "Speaking of – have you heard back from them?"

"Yes, your Grace". From his belt he pulled up a small scroll, rolling it out to show it to Robb – but it was nonsense to him, utterly and completely. Not only was it written with Valyrian glyphs, but those glyphs were also coded. "Maester Gormon says he is next in line to be Grand Maester. I am not surprised. He is all but Archmaester of Ravencraft already. It's odd for him to send me messages directly. Most often we go through Lord Willas". He turned it over and looked at it himself, frowning as he did so, his growing sandy bangs hanging low before his eyes. "Some of it gives cause for concern".

"Concern?" Robb wondered, and from beside his ornate chair, serving as an impromptu throne, Grey Wind lifted his head and too looked at the former Maester. "Do tell me why".

"'My grandniece grows unruly. I fear that she begins to influence her brothers and events towards a less than desirable direction'". Ebbert paused and commented. "By 'Grandniece' he might be speaking of Olene Tyrell and Desmera Redwyne as well, but more likely he speaks of Margaery. 'We have little reason to believe that Stark will heed wise counsel. He has been taught by a Valyrian chain'. He speaks of the Winterfell Maester, Luwin. 'We are gladdened that you have won his Grace's trust. Is there any veracity to the rumours of extra-normalcy amongst the Northerners?'"

"'Extra-normalcy'?" Robb asked aloud, scowling at the word. "What is it with those lot and their fancy bloody words?"

"Semantics? To make disseminatory and educational discussion more specific, your Grace. It goes on to ask about troop compositions, army numbers, your own character – to inform them in their deliberations over whether they should recognise your endeavours as worthy of support, no doubt. Most of it is just like the other messages. Except for the closing statement". He looked up at Robb and spoke the last words with great trepidation. "'The glass candles are burning'".

"What the bloody shite does any of that mean?" Robb muttered out his question and reached up to rub his eyes despite the pain in them, longing for soft hands on his aching muscles and the scent of roses. "Glass candles?"

"Relics in the Citadel of an extra-normal nature, your Grace. Extra-normal can be anything uncommon, but refers most often to something sorcerous in nature". He rolled the scroll back up and put it back in the loop in his belt. "When I was in the room with the glass candle, as my final trial towards becoming a Maester, the thing was as dead as the dragons. This is strange indeed".

"What do you intend to tell them?" That was the most important question of them all, second only to 'Are you truly loyal?' "You did inform them as ordered last time?"

"As all the first messages where I noted my suspicions of sorcery within your army? I dismissed my previous musings and deductions as errors born from lack of trust. They believe as I told you, your Grace: that you were wounded when we entered Harrenhal, and I won your trust nursing you back to health". He looked to down to the message and scowled. "With your permission, your Grace, I will tell them of Neversleep's sermons and his growing number of followers. I'll tell them he gives them drinks and herbs to give them waking dreams and ludicrous visions. That is the manner of most Essosi cults. They will draw their own conclusions from there. Meanwhile, I shall endeavour to continue doing as I did before".

"Work your way up their web until you find the spider at the centre of it" Robb nodded and ran his fingers through his beard, thinking that he had to trim it before he saw Margaery again lest he look like a savage. "I don't like the notion of these secretive old men, shaping the world to their own frightened whims. None but Northerners shall rule in the North. The Maesters need to be defanged. Also, these glass candles – they bother you, being lit?" Ebbert bowed in the affirmative. "Well then, I trust your instincts. Find out what they mean. Approach the one responsible for them. There is one?"

"Archmaester Marwyn – I'll begin to trade letters with him, stating that I am interested in forging links of Valyrian Steel and adding them to my chain. I will tell Gormon that such knowledge is to alleviate my uncertainties in my mission in your court, your Grace". Something occurred to him and he turned around to look out over the great hall and the three Maesters working over their coinage there, too far away to having overheard their hushed conversation. "I don't think this conspiracy goes all the way through the Order, Sire. Still, be careful about which Maesters you share the principles of Skinchanging and sorcery with".

"What makes you trustworthy, then?" The question got Ebbert to turn full about, but Robb stared back at him and broke his resolve. "You've broken your oaths. You're a shite Maester, aye – but you're not the only one. Broken oaths and disillusion is not enough to drive someone to betray what used to be all their lives before. Why are you so eager to do this? To fight those who you used to respect?"

A few long moments passed before Ebbert answered. "The true world is what it is, your Grace – not what we think it is. Not what we believe it to be. It simply is, in all its complexity and wonder. I have always wanted to understand it, but I was going about it the wrong way. Belief or debate isn't the right way to go about it. Memory is. Wisdom. I have seen the path to wisdom, Sire. I cannot stray, not now". He bowed to Robb and said "by your leave, your Grace" and turned to go about his business. As he went Robb spotted scratches of ink on the palm of his left hand.

"An odd bunch of fellows, those Maesters" he muttered to no one but himself, though Grey Wind raised his head to listen to him. "Sodd ever one of those ornery bullocks in the South. Maybe I should get my own". He looked over to Grey Wind, who snorted loudly. "Aye, that's a fool's notion, that".

What felt like hours later, after he had gotten to speak with quartermasters and seneschals and messengers from the contingents of the army that had moved farther into the Westerlands to pillage and conquer, envoys from the Bolton levy, the Crannogmen and the Barrowdown men who were heading northwards towards the Crag and the Banefort and who were lagging behind due to their men enjoying the aftermath of crushing the Lannister garrison the Lefford lands a little too much, he got a respite from the scholarly works that drove him to tears.

"Your Grace!" boomed Smalljon as he marched into the verdant hall of the conquered keep, tracking mud and filth all over the carpets by the soles of his riding boots as he led the other outriders to his presence. He and some of his men, Jon and Arya among them, bore sacks of burlap on their back, and unceremoniously dumped them on the long tables in front of the scribes, ruining their estimates of the value of the sacking thus made. "We came across some wee Westerlander nobles, so we did! They were trying to flee with their wealth to Lannisport!" He ripped open the sack and spilled forth gold in a torrent. "Fucking stopped them and shoved them into the dungeons!"

"Good work, then" Robb nodded and got down to them there, Grey Wind rising to go greet Ghost and Nymeria with concerned sniffing and low dull sounds as they followed Arya and Jon through the door, and Robb looked to his siblings. Jon, happy at times, was back to his usual self, glowering darkly at nothing in particular. And Arya?

Arya was precisely as morbidly twisted as the Hound and the Riverlands wondering had made her. "Your army's pretty big" she commented at Robb, skulking away from Jon like a beaten whelp before the White Wolf caught her by the shoulder and held her to stay. "I mean, they're probably all cunts who're easy to kill-" Jon cleared his voice, and she fell silent.

She had changed. Gods, had she changed. Her voice was so much colder now, in addition to being rougher with her speech full of curses. She strained to sound the same as she had before, he could tell, but it just wouldn't work. She was shut off, distant. And while before she had wild and easy to the smile and the insult alike, now she was savage and seemingly mean-spirited.

He wondered why Jon accepted her current state as it was. He wondered how she had been tortured on her way, how she must had suffered. He wondered what had made her whisper the names of those she had promised to murder at night. He wondered why she thought that the only God in existence was Death.

And he wondered why Jon looked so apprehensive. He needed not wonder much longer. "Oi, brother" Jon began darkly. "She asked me if she could squire for Roose fucking Bolton". Robb, in response, looked to Arya before he sighed and rubbed his eyes.

He couldn't help but grumble. "Mother's going to have a fit".

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** This chapter was easy to write. Like, really easy. More than ten thousand words in less than a day. Amazing, yeah? I should take long breaks more often…

… Just kidding... mostly.

Anyway, two things. First, I wanted to write a heart-warming, glorious, sappy reunion between the Stark children, I really did. But then I thought about everything that happened to Arya in the story up to that point and I couldn't help but to reflect how utterly messed up she had to be by then. Like, Child Soldier messed up. PTSD up the everything.

There will be the sappy family stuff later on in this story though – once Arya gets coaxed out of her shell a little bit.

Secondly, the Golden Tooth. I had written the battle for another place, a place of by me greatly exaggerated significance – namely, the Crag. I had noted it all throughout the chapters leading up to this, but it was an error. I've gone back and edited that in all the previous mentions of the place in the chapters leading up to this one.

I am nothing if not thorough.

Also, one last thing: I will make up some words in the language of the First Men from time to time, calling on my knowledge of Old Norse and Irish Gaelic to do so. It won't be anything that requires explicit translation or suspension of disbelief to understand, though.

… that's for the sections entirely in Valyrian when Daenerys enters the story.

Anyway, I hoped that you have enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	14. Stone by Stone

Chapter Fourteen – Stone by Stone

* * *

 ** _Roose_**

As he listened to the wolf girl idly talk he watched his men and the Stark levy ride side by side, the vanguard of their cavalry riding ahead of them. _Gods, My Grandfather would have foamed at the mouth if he saw this_.

"Oi, Leechlord" she summoned his attention sharply as a gathering of Glover scouts, rangers of the Wolfswood in leathers and light arms on small shaggy ponies, rode past them back up the column of the army on the road. In the distance, past the banners and the tips of the pikes and the lances of the vanguard he saw the Westerlander village of Oxcross, the Direwolf flying above the bell tower of its burned-out sept, leaping in the breeze in that cloudy day. Contingent after contingent of the Northern army had passed through the village, splitting up as they headed to roam the Westerlands and burn it like the Lannisters had the Riverlands just a scant of a year earlier, and now the people of the village cowered in their homes, watching the Northerners march past them in silent fear. "Oi" Arya prodded again, riding beside him on her mountain pony. "What're you thinking about?"

"How your family and mine used to enjoy killing each other". She merely shrugged at the answer, caring little. "In the age of Heroes" Gods, what a foolish name "my ancestors used to make cloaks out of the skins of yours. Put them on our racks and work them until they stopped screaming forever. Does that not bother you, like it bothers your brothers?" Then again, they had stoft stomachs like most people. She did not. Perhaps that was why he liked her so.

Most likely that was a part of it. A small part of it, at least.

"Why would it?" she asked back at him, seemingly perplexed. "They're not me. They've been dead for a thousand years or something. And sometimes, if someone has been killing your friends, you want to make him scream". She seemed to think on it a little more and then shrugged again. "And sometimes, if you want to know something but they won't tell you, you've got to hurt them to make them talk. Don't you?"

Roose looked back at her, eyeing her carefully. She looked back at him, grey eyes colder than the starless midwinter nights over the Dreadfort. Ruthless, calculating, savage – but clever, quick to obey, eager to learn and fastidious. It was as if she was the best parts of Ramsey and Domeric both, rolled up into one. _Gods, if I had a daughter I would wish she was like her_ … he pushed the idle affection out of his mind. Maybe he would one day, if Walda popped babes out of her quim like she popped tarts into her mouth.

He'd have to get rid of Ramsey first, then. A task that had proved difficult in the past. "Clever girl" he noted with a nod her way. "But it isn't just about hurting them. About peeling the skin off their backs. It's about stripping the hope from them, drowning them in darkness. Then, when they have nothing left, show them a way out. They will offer you the world and everything in it to you in return".

"Not like the man you worked on ten nights ago" she pointed out shrewdly, harkening back to the night when she had intruded on his work in the Bolton region of the camp. "He had a rag in his mouth. You didn't want anything out of him. Not his screams or anything. Why was that?" They were riding some distance ahead of his personal guard, followed by Robb's honour guard, followed in turn by the marching infantry of their respective sections of the army and the Weirwood Raiders.

Roose blinked at her and thought on it, giving her a slight smile that he knew would make any other man or woman than that girl and his own bastard shiver in fear. "That was for my amusement, and to keep my skills as honed as my blades. Because of his foolish puns, girl". He had finally tracked down the man who made all the puns about the name of their king – _looks like Golden Tooth's about to get_ Robbed _, gents_ – and made him suffer for it, stealing him away from the patrol he had been assigned to when he was by the latrine taking a piss. A dumb fool, dim-witted yet thinking himself clever. Those poor jokes and gone through the camp like a plague and caused Roose no small amount of affronted rage on behalf on the mere concept of wit. Arya had intruded on his work when he was some ways into avenging himself on that man and his fool puns.

At first he had been vexed, peeved that a nameless rat of a child had managed to sneak into his very own abattoir tent where he kept the rack and the other instruments of his gory work, that his Red Rider guards hadn't as much as seen her enter, but when she settled against a table covered with flaying knives and said, coldly, that she wanted to speak with him, he had been intrigued. With the thin sword at her hip and the dagger in her belt he could tell that she was some manner of murderer in spite of her age. A dagger in the dark, sent to kill him? Or a messenger of the Freys or the Lannisters come to implore him to take up arms for their hopeless cause once more?

He had asked of her to reveal and unfold herself as he worked with his best blade on the gagged naked man strapped to the wooden stand, and he had almost slipped with the knife and severed the veins in the man's loins when he heard that her name was Arya Stark. She said that she wouldn't have revealed her name in another place or another camp, but this was her brother's army. The thought of her older brother Robb being king didn't seem to faze her in the slightest. As if it changed nothing. And in a way it had not, not for the Smallfolk perhaps. But certainly for her.

They talked idly for a few hours that night, idle small talk as if she wasn't watching him flay all the skin off the back, chest and thighs of one of his own men. He began to notice her spirit then, stony hard and cold yet fierce and wild, and by then he was already fascinated. When she asked him what he knew of Braavos and the Faceless Men he had asked what she wanted with that knowledge. She had been loath to explain herself, and so he had been loath to answer. But that morning, as she helped him saddle his horse and strap his pauldrons to his breastplate, she had finally revealed the reason to him.

"Girl" he spoke up as they rode, knowing that they would have to part soon. The four riders-wide formation up the road was actually consistent of double ranks of Dreadfort men riding next to double ranks of Winterfell men, and by the Oxcross crossroads Roose would take his levy north, following the Barrowdown men north towards the Iron Hills on the coast of the Sunset Sea and Ironman's Bay. Meanwhile Robb Stark would take the Winterfell levy – and the Cerwyn, Cassel, Holt, Long and Condon levies and riders with them, all Houses of the Northern heartland dominated by Winterfell – to the south, to Greenfield and then on to Silverhill, bringing Arya with them. "I would hold to my end of the bargain. Listen".

So strange they looked, side by side, the Stark soldiers and the Bolton men. The Stark bannermen in grey and and white and silver, plate worn over their grey chailmail hauberks and shirts, their iron lances bright against the cloud-spotted winter sky of the South, their kettle helmets polished until they shone. The Bolton men coloured their weapons dark, their armours made out of black chainmail over which red leather, richly stitched and ornately carved, was laid, the captains bearing cloaks of ragged furs, and their helmets were vizored like most of the levies from along the Narrow Sea coast were, the visors skeletal and grim, eyes made into mere slits. Odd beside each other.

The Starks were monsters who were thought to be men. The Boltons were men who were thought to be monsters.

She looked up at him on his mottled horse, a Ryswell steed given to him by his late wife's family in his youth, old and deaf yet as fierce and strong as ever. "Aye" she nodded at him, and he drew a deep breath and began to speak.

"My father once inquired from the Faceless Men how much it would cost to kill your Grandfather, Rickard Stark. This I say in confidence, as both are long dead and my uncle killed my father before I cut his head off in turn. It matters little". He kept his gaze locked on the distant horizon as he spoke to her, even as he felt her eyes seem to try to drill into his head with his stare. "All this I tell you now I heard from him, elaborated a little by my time spent in Braavos, trading furs and ore for paints and gold. He said that there was something fundamentally strange about how the Faceless Men behaved. If they believe death to be the sacrament of their faith, that the gift of the Many-Faced God is a mercy, why do they require gold in turn for it? Why is it that all Faceless Men in Westeros claim dominance over the whole of Braavos, like their cult is everywhere, while their temple is a nothing place, visited by few, and they have to smuggle their slayers in and out from the city?"

A perplexed Arya furrowed her brow, waiting for him to expound on the answer, and he had to admit that he was being a little bit obtuse and vague. "The answer, Stark girl, is that they are neither as powerful or as pious as they claim to be. They are not just a faith. They are a religion, a sect. And like all such groups it has allies, enemies, and ambitions to play the game of thrones".

"The current Sea Lord of Braavos knows to fight their power, the power of glamour and shadows. He has a glamour placed on one of the beasts in his palace when he calls for a new First Sword. Those who can see through the wolf and behold the pup, through the tiger and behold the kitten – those he take into his service. The Faceless Men shroud themselves in sorcery, but it can be penetrated. Still the political factions in Braavos – for there are those who are for slavery, against the Sea Lord and for and against a thousand other things – hire their blades. They are a pawn and a player in the game, same as all the others".

"Beyond that" he paused and summoned knowledge buried in the depths of his memory "there is something else I may tell you. Their shadow sorcery – it is not a thing of their own. My father thought that perhaps the first of their number learned tricks from a Shadowbinder in an age long ago. Ineffective tricks almost anyone can learn. Some scant few, though, have sorcery in their blood". He looked over to the far side of her pony where her Direwolf Nymeria trotted. The great grey and motley beast seemed to dislike him. Well, perhaps it was only natural. "Like you do. Perhaps if you learn their tricks you could change your face better than the other Faceless Men could. Maybe you could do it easier".

"How do you know so much about it?" she wondered, and he scoffed. "You wouldn't keep such much thinking on them if you didn't want something from them. What is it? Do you want to hire them for something?"

Not that the thought hadn't occurred to him, but knives were knives, and his own knives he could kill with for no fee at all. "No, Stark girl. In truth, I want to know how their magic works. I want to strap the Kindly Man to my stands and work on him until he tells me all his secrets". _If they take faces and wear them, becoming them, could not I do the same with the whole skin of others? Perhaps my ancestors did so in the past._ "Which is why I asked to be given the Iron Hills by your brother, to pillage and burn and ravish as best I want".

"Why?" she wondered, having, as he knew, studied at his feet every late evening and night while she in the days stayed close to either one of her two brothers, trying to learn the sword from Jon and the world and its maps from Robb. "There is nothing there. It's almost as poor as the Iron Islands and as dull as the Rills".

"In the legends from the age of heroes the Hooded Kings of the Banefort were sorcerers" he looked to her and smirked, and she wondered more, as she always did. She had an inquisitive mind. Indeed, the best of both his sons mingled in one girl not even of his own blood. _How quaint_. "With their thralls the Hooded Kings fought for eons against the Lannisters of Casterly Rock. I must admit that I sympathise. Also, they have no doubt secrets hidden in their keeps. I intend to take their castle, put the whole of House Banefort on the rack and unmake their keep stone by stone until I have learned all of their secrets".

"I see". The crossroads before the village drew nearer as they rode, and his vanguard steered towards the right and the north under the signals of drums and bone flutes while the Starks turned south under the call of iron-bound auroachs horns. "When Robb's wedding is done over with, when he's convinced Mother to let me squire for you" and Arya had convinced her brother to let her in turn "will you teach me them too?"

"I've told you, girl. I am no knight, and so you can't be my squire. Only fools and Southrons concern themselves with knighthood". He did, however, think it over. "But I did say you could learn at my side". It was an odd thing, having someone who wanted to learn his bloody trade. Domeric had been too soft, too squeamish, to want to learn how to flay a man's skin from his body, and Ramsey had learnt by Reek and his own cruel imagination. But Arya wanted to learn from him. "Well then, I will share the secrets of Morgan Banefort with you. And teach you how to flay. But only after this tedious war is over". The dungeons of the Dreadfort were uniquely suited for such lessons, after all.

"I'll hold you to that". Her lack of gratitude was another side of her that vexed him to no end, but he was not one to hold to politeness and the foppish tender ways of sentimentality. They said no farewells when they came onto the crossroads and he held his horse to the right, following the vanguard, while she road back to join her brothers. Not a word was traded, but as he rode in silence at the head of his Red Riders he found himself smirking. He had not known that having a surrogate daughter was something that he wanted. How strange. Foolish thoughts – he was getting meek in his old age. Better have Ramsey either done away with or slit his throat before he succumbed to the supposed strengths of a bleeding, womanish heart.

He cast those thoughts to his mind and glanced behind him, and the captain of the riders rode up behind him, removing his helmet as he approached his side, a signal followed by absolute loyalty. By the ornate visor of the helmet, even more face-like and as a skull than those of his men, his rank was affirmed. "Cutter – report".

"Our spy in the Weirwood Raiders is entrenched, m'Lord Bolton" he bowed to Roose in the saddle, his face scarred with scratches and cuts from knives and swords and women's fingernails alike. But Roose wasn't one to punish a man for a little spot of sport, whatever Robb Stark's orders on the treatment of rapists said. Cutter was a good sword, and clever enough for his station. "An' the four of our own approached by the Green Man, Neversleep, for their warging says they've all bonded. One, Slink of the Lonely Hills, got with a weasel of all things. He keeps it in his shirts".

"And the other three?" If the Taking of the Tooth proved anything, it was firstly that Robb Stark was loved by the bards of his mummery – Roose couldn't tell if it was a fool or a shrewd thing – and secondly that Wargs and Skinchangers had their places in an army, and a very important one at that. He had been blessed by fortune, it seemed. He requested the oblivious Neversleep to comb the ranks of his contingent for wargs, and out of nearly three thousand men there were as many as four Skinchangers amongst them. Quite many, comparatively. Only amongst the mountain clans, the Bear Island levy, the Umber men and the Starks themselves was there more of them. Most often it was as little as one or two men on a thousand.

"Riler's bonded a wolf, an evil thing from the Stark bitch's pet pack" Cutter went on as ordered, having raised all four of the men in question to the Red Riders the night before to keep them close, under a watchful eye where they could be useful. "Tanner's got a hound, two of the big bastards even, and a cat from Sarsfield of all things. And Dahn's got an owl. A snowy owl. I've no bloody reckoning where he got it from, but it's one noisy fucking beast at night".

"Tell Krem he can go slit someone else's throat if the shrieks bother him – the Wargs are not to be harmed". The requirement to ride with the Red Ones, the Red Riders that had kept the tradition since the Red Kings of the Dreadfort, were stringent. Martial prowess, brutality and loyalty in equal measures was needed. "Does anyone of them know how recognise other Skinchangers on sight?" Lyra Mormont and the Stark bastard, Jon, seemed to be able to, though he was uncertain. Too much was unknown about this skill of theirs. But it was useful. And Roose was loath to throw away a perfectly good blade just because he didn't know how it had been forged.

"Tanner says he can. Says he can smell it, so he does". He paused and seemed hesitant, to which Roose waved him on, telling him to get his question off his chest. "He says that he's smelled it on 'is bairns too, m'Lord. He just didn't know t'was Warging. He's got four of them, two lads and two lasses, all smelling like that supposedly. I thought you'd want to know, is all, m'Lord".

"Good thinking, Cutter. This is why you are captain". That, and he the fact that he had put an axe through the head of the previous captain. Such tended to be the way with the Red Riders. "Tell Tanner I'm moving his family into the Dreadfort. I'm taking his children into my service, all of them". Roose pondered it for a second before he made up his mind, thinking of the fact that those children, and the Stark children, were all Skinchangers. It seemed to follow the blood.

"Also, take four of the camp harlots aside. Do not touch them. Wash them, dress them, send them to Tanner, Dahn, Riler and Slink. Tell them to pick one to warm his blanket for the rest of the war. No other man is allowed to touch them. Pay the whores handsomely". Cutter nodded and saluted, though Roose wasn't quite done yet. "Also, tell the whores that if anyone of them drinks moontea, all of them will lose their heads". He said no more, and Cutter bowed in the saddle and rode back to his men, telling his second, Krem, to take over while he saw to the other matters.

The Starks had ruled in the North for eight thousand years, by law and creed and blood. And their skin changing magic, he realised now. Was it any surprise that they had come to rule the North? What other sorcery did they hide, these Starks? If he took the skin of one, made his face to it, could he too walk in the mind and shape of a beast? Too many questions, too many things unknown, unanswered. He knew not enough. Better keep the Stark girl close to him until he knew what it all meant.

Roose, apart from his soldiers, rode alone most of the rest of the long way north towards the Banefort, his thoughts filled with magic and sorcery.

And visions of a future he was starting to think that Ramsey was unequipped to rule over.

* * *

 ** _Robb_**

Two days after they took Greenfield he discovered that getting shot by arrows hurt. A lot.

"Stop squirming, you big bairn" Jon held him down by the other shoulder as Ebbert stood over him where he sat at the table of his command tent, the former Maester hard at work at stitching at the wound in his shoulder. Smalljon, commanding his personal honour guard and thus with the flying column of his own cavalry, watched it from one side, his face red with rage. Royce and Dacey stood beside him, neither of them looking any happier, while Arya was off on the corner, sitting on table with crossed legs as she sharpened one of her knives. As Ebbert worked the thread as expertly as a master seamstress without any fingers, eyes or pride in her work Robb bared his teeth against the pain and looked squarely at the two men that stood before him.

"Do you understand why I have been doing well in this war so far, Lord Condon, Lord Bulwer?" he asked, the concoction that had given him making his vision blurr and the details of his tent vague at best, his mind slipping easier to other matters. "Do you?" At his tone no one spoke even as Edric walked from soldier to soldier in there with a pitcher of wine and a selection of cups. Robb wasn't allowed any. Ebbert had told him that drinking that and that foul concoction both could lead to lethal results. "No? Allow Maester Robb to educate youse all!"

"I hate it when you get like this" Jon muttered over his shoulder, unfazed as bloody always. Didn't he know that they had just suffered a defeat? That he had? That he, Robb-bloody-Stark, had been bested by a fucking wall? "You're insufferable".

"Shut your gob, brother" he muttered aside before he went on, lifting the one of his arms that didn't feel like it had been set on fire to drink from the contents of his cup, contents that smelled like rotting moss and dead snails. "Since this war began we've been outnumbered. Surrounded. In hostile lands, fighting an enemy much better supplied than us. Somehow, we have survived. Because of three things". He held up one hand, raising one finger. "Firstly, speed. Secondly, pikes. Thirdly" he drove his fist down on the armrest of his chair with a thud "people following the bloody orders they've been given!"

"Your Grace" Kyle Condon opened his mouth to Robb's further bevexment, startled by the anger shown, out of character for Robb as he had been when Condon had first met him in his youth. But he had been shot in the shoulder and robbed of victory by the stupidity of his own men. He was bound to be at least a little peeved. "It was never my intention to bring you in harm's way. I beg the profoundest of pardons. Please, I beg of thee, have clemency on me and my family".

"I-" he bared his teeth against the pain, his thoughts unfocused and dispersed. Like leaf on the sodding wind, each slipping out of his hands as he reached out to catch them. _A true King knows restraint_. _No better than Joffrey_. "Don't. You have two grown sons – they will ride in my honour guard from now on. Maybe that will teach your House the importance on holding to the sodding battle plans. That'll be punishment enough. You both" he looked to Roren in turn "stood in this very tent last night. Both of you heard the plan. Edric!" he barked, and the Boy Lord of Starfall jumped, startled. "Tell the stratagem back to them, will you?"

Lord Dayne, clever as he was, adapted quickly. "At your command, Sire. While the rest of the army hid in the forests and the hills beyond the view of the buttresses of the walls" he recited back easily "Lord Condon's men, led by him, would ride out close to the wall, like a raiding party made too brave, chanting songs about killing Lannisters. The defenders would sally out, and they would fall back, baiting the defenders to pursue. They would lead them up into the hills, where your army would surround them and crush them. Returning to the city and marshalling the troops as if to attack it, Lord Serret would surrender, having too few men left to hold the walls with".

"But the Westermen sallied out, and what did you do, Lord Condon?" Robb asked, bent on answering it himself. "You charged them! Head on! Honour and Glory like a sodding Southron, inside the range of their archers! Well, that was workable for the plan. There were far fewer of you than of them. After an unnecessary loss of lives you would be made to retreat anyway, and they would pursue. The plan would be salvaged, if barely. But then you" he looked to Neversleep, his skin crawling with green "you decided to be oh so bloody noble".

"I shan't ask of any pardons for it, your Grace" Roren intoned back at him, his voice as wickedly distant as it had been ever since he had been inducted into the Green Men on the Isle of Faces. Because that was what had happened. Apparently. Robb hadn't been able to tell, what with the utterly demented visions and all. "Men were dying. Faithful men. I could not sit idly by and watch them-"

"Winter is Coming, Roren, and fools either die in the snow or empty everyone else's larders". Gods, he hoped that wouldn't become a saying. "So you ordered the Weirwood Riders to charge. Felicitations, priest. You only managed to put your own force in the way of the arrows of the defenders. We have no siege weapons! Thatäs the reason we're not attacking Casterly Rock itself! What could we possibly gain by charging the bloody walls?!" With his free hand he reached up to rub his eyes as Ebbert and Jon stepped away from him, their needlework done. _Thank the Gods_. "Luckily the other contingents of the army stayed put and followed orders when I charged in to save your sorry arses. We fought back the sally, the defenders got back in behind their walls, and some Lannister archer shot me in the sodding shoulder!"

"Your Grace" Jon pointed out after a long moment of pressured silence tense to the point of breaking. "It wasn't an archer, it was a crossbowman. And he had a Serrett tabard on". Jon had been at his side, holding him up in the saddle and taking Armstark's reins when the quarrel struck him through the shoulder on his right side and made the sword tumble from his hand. Pissed off as he was, and in a deeply drunken state by the Maester's concoction, he still knew that he would have fallen to the ground and been trampled underhoof by the horses had Jon not been there.

"Aye, so he had" Robb let out another sigh and put his rubbing hand down, giving the rough stitching on his shoulder a sneer of a look. It would scar viciously, but all the good surgeons and healers seemed to have gone to other wings of the army, going with other lords. Had he paid them poorly? Was that it? "If you had followed orders, my Lords, I would have been on a ship south along the river to Goldengrove by now, setting off to see Summer-Sun Flo- I mean Maegaery. Instead I'm here, in camp just outside Silverhill, with a sodding hole in my shoulder!"

 _The cold knows no mercy_. Gods, he was so angry. _No better than Joffrey_.

"Roren, Lord Kyle - you may leave us. Go to your men and thank the Gods that the sallying force retreated back behind their gates before they took your heads and your banners. You are dismissed". They bowed and went towards the exit, leaving shortly once Smalljon had done his customary stare-down. He didn't blame the troops of either man for the faults of their commanders. Roren's riders especially.

Men broke their oaths to both lord and land to paint the Weirwoods on their shields and join his band of fighters, knights and infantrymen on stolen horses both, taking all who professed themselves to be faithful. They had been growing in number daily before the armies parted to set forth and conquer, one man or woman in ten amongst them Wargs and Skinchangers. When the armies made camp and lit their fires for the night Roren would stand before whatever Weirwood or hearttree he could find and summoned the attention of soldiers and camp followers with fiery sermons. Speechs about the Gods, about the Children, about the First Men, about the shackles of the Seven and the Seven Pointed Star and the "false histories" of the Maesters and the Southron courts.

A wellspring of speech, considering the man was Southron himself. Then again, the Green Men had inducted him into their ranks. Perhaps that had burned away everything else in him. The Old Gods had no clergy, but the Green Men were the closest to that there was, tending to the Weirwoods. For thousands of years there had been none of them in the North. They hadn't been needed.

But magic was returning to the world, and the times were changing. They were eager men, the Raiders. And eagerness was something rarely seen in any other than fresh troops a year through a long and bloody war.

He had to admit that summoning Neversleep to his side for something else than squabbles and brawls between the faithful Riverlanders and Weirwood Riders was a refreshing thing. Jon had said it the best one time just before they took Sarsfield: "It's only a matter of time before someone gets stabbed in the name of the Gods". Robb was unsure of what powers had sent the vision on that first night at the old keep in the Whispering Wood, if it had been the Gods or merely the voices and the souls of the Children, the memories of the dead trapped in the Weirwoods. Or if there had ever been a difference between any it. But he wasn't about to be as fanatical about the minor details of religious dogma. So what if his Gods were the only ones with true power in the world? The Southrons could worship the Star or the sky or the sodding mountains for all he cared. Whatever songs they wrote or words they spoke -

A thought occurred to him, and despite the pain in his arm he smirked. "Maybe we won't have to siege down the walls. We can do it much quicker, and not lose another man". They all looked at him, confused and hopeful both. He was their King. They all leaned on him, relied on him to rule and conquer all his enemies. "Dacey, take on of the spare command tents off the wagons. One of the grey ones. Erect it as a pavilion just outside the reach of their crossbows. Banners, servants, all of the pomp and circumstance we can muster".

"By your word, my King" she bowed and left the tent in a flurry of her green Bear Island cloak of fur. She was ever faithful, Dacey. He had no ken of why Lady Mormont would rather have her second youngest daughter Alysane succeed her as Lady of Bear Island instead.

"Royce, get your armour on. Have your squire polish it until you outshine the sun itself. Take Smalljon's giant horse and ride to the gate of Silverhill under a flag of truce. Proclaim that I would speak with Lord Serrett. At sundown today. Speak humbly. It is of paramount importance that the Lord himself comes out to treat". Royce saluted and bowed in the manner of Valemen as he turned to leaf, and Robb looked to Edric and the other squire, one of the Mallister boys. "Fetch me musicians from the camp. Lute, flute, drum and harp. Have Rymund lead them. Tell them to install themselves at the pavilion as soon as they may and harmonise quick as they may".

"Your Grace!" the boys jumped to obey, and in turn Robb ordered all the rest of them around until only Jon, Ebbert and Smalljon were left. The Umber heir in particular seemed to be of a pensive mood. "He might as well borrow my horse. It's the biggest bloody one around. But about Condon and Neversleep - were you not overly kind, your Grace?"

"As to what, Smallhon? Making an enemy out of the leader of rapid worshipers and breeding resentment out of my own heartland levy?" He shook his head and looked to his younger brother. "Now, you might not know this, but these two" he gestured to Smalljon and Ebbert "are the ones keeping watch on my network of spies".

Jon was taken aback at the news, as were the two, glancing at each other from out of the corners of their eyes, instantly wary. "That's-" Jon began, frowning like he always did. "That's not very like you. Or Father. He never had spies, or anything like the sort of-"

"You don't need to remind me, Jon. But Father died for his honour. If I fall, so does the North. I don't intend to get me head lopped off by Lannisters anytime soon". Well, there really was no need to be so serious about it. "Also, I have about three. In total. Nothing compared to the legions of King's Landing and the Lannisters".

"Then we are to share our findings with each other, all of us?" Ebbert seemed apprehensive, doubtful. Then again, maybe he was just hungry. Robb thought that it was hard to tell. Was the tent made out of faces? "With all due respect and fealty, your Grace, but wouldn't it be better if we waited until you have weathered the more illusory elements of the drink I gave you? It is made to match the prowess of Milk of the Poppy, but is made from several fey and poisonous ingredients. One should be cautious when-"

"Fie on caution! War is won through knowledge. Why do you think I have Lyra and Jon be more within their animal skins than without? Scouting, screening, knowing the enemy, that is the key to fighting him. That, and a long sodding pike. Smalljon" he looked solely at the Umber heir. "You begin".

"I got messages from Goldengrove and our man in Highgarden both" Smalljon began as bid, though he did so warily, glancing at Ebbert from out of the corner of his eye. "The one in Highgarden is little more than an upjumped fur-monger. His latest missive says he's managed to weasel his way into the colonnades now, that he's under the wing of some Southron noblewoman with a fancy for Northern men and Northern clothes. A passing fancy, he says, nothing more. But as long as they swoon and think to tend the prime bulls there's no need to look the gifted cattle in the mouths".

"You've a spy in Highgarden?" Ebbert asked, and Smalljon looked over to him fully, looking more down than aside given his giant stature, and nodded at him in an almost nonchalant manner before he turned back towards his king.

"Aye. He says the boys Redwyne have been returned to the court". Robb arched an eyebrow and traded looks with Jon before Smalljon raised his hands. "I ken. Not much thus far, but here's what I know, and the implications of it. See, those two, Lord Paxter of the Arbor's lads, are supposed to be squiring in King's Landing. They were returned to the Reach a week ago, with no pomp at all. All secret like. My man only found out because he was" he smirked and scoffed "entertained one of the maids that tended their chambers".

Robb narrowed his eyes and held up his good hand, the numbness burning around the pain in his shoulder. "Get to the point, Umber. Why is this important?"

"The Redwyne twins were hostages of the Lannisters, your Grace. Outspoken or not, so t'was. Moreover, they returned to Highgarden as the same time as the Dornish embassy arrived". Robb frowned at that, and Ebbert looked all but confused, though Jon didn't seem to understand the significance. "Some lot of them. Led by Lord Paramount Doran's brother, of all things".

"Prince" Ebbert corrected, and Smalljon gave him a dark look. "The Dornish don't have Lords paramount, not in their own culture. Or kings. They have Princes. Prince Oberyn, then – sent by his brother no doubt. Who else?"

"Oh, some lot of them" Smalljon shrugged. "A couple of lasses who are apparently snakes, one bloke named Cletus – stupid sodding name, that – Lady Larra Blackmont and some children, one Daeron… Vaith, I think it's pronounced like that anyway, and lastly some fuck calling himself Darkstar". He scoffed again, shaking his head wryly. "Southrons. Pompous fuckers, the lot of them".

"The Martells and the Tyrells don't get along, your Grace" Ebbert informed helpfully from aside, as Robb had little inkling on why this was important, especially in his current state. "Never had, historically, and especially not since after Oberyn Martell crippled Lord Willas. They wouldn't have gone to Highgarden without reason, War of the Five Kings be damned. Given this, we must assume one of two things; either Willas Tyrell's web of spies and agents spreads all the way to Dorne, helping him in his plans against the Lannisters in King's Landing-"

"Or the Dornish know of our plans to ally with the Tyrells and intend to work against it" Robb finished for the former Maester, his thoughts struggling through the fog within his mind. "Or for it. Or with it. Bloody shadow work this, rings within rings and games within games". He bared his teeth and pushed something out of the side of his eye, some muck that stung something fierce. "Best to err on the side of caution and think the Dornish want my head too. Let them come and try their best. My family had held Winterfell for seven thousand years before their great Nymeria was even born. Let's see how much their desert sun warms them when Winter comes".

"The King in the North" they said as one, Smalljon grinning so broadly that for an instant he looked to be the spitting image of his father. Robb heard Arya say it too, from her corner half-forgotten. A faint sound, but it was there. "Ebbert" he nodded and held back a smile "your turn".

"In regards to my efforts in Oldtown and the Citadel" he began, glancing sideways at Smalljon "I've made some headway. Mostly into the Citadel as a whole. I've traded some letters with Archmaester Marwyn, but I think he believes me to be an agent for the faction opposed to his. He is a shrewd man despite his countenance, and suspicious. I've made better progress with some of his apprentices and the Maesters surrounding him. In time I might convince him to trust me. Still, he's reluctant to share anything in regards to the nature of the Glass Candles". He noticed Jon's and Smalljon's confused looks and made to explain. "Magical cylinders made out of-"

"Sorcery bollocks" Robb cut that part of the expounding short. "Enough said on that for now. Smalljon, your woman in Goldengrove. Does she have anything for us? Word from there has been-"

"Lost in the bustle of the war, it seems" Smalljon informed, and Robb felt himself begin to scowl. "Apparently there have been messages coming from there to us, but with the camp moving it hasn't been able to keep up too well. Anyways, only a few things worth noting. Lord Mace Tyrell is doubtful about the soundness of his daughter's plan, and Olenna Redwyne, your sweetheart's grandmother, came there with Mace and the second Tyrell boy, Willas. Along with her mother. Oh, and one more thing". He, once more, began to smirk. "Royce's gallivanting in the sept? Apparently he's gone and made a child on one of Margaery's handmaidens doing that. Serves the pompous sod right in my mind, but-" he saw Robb's expression and smothered his mirth. "Alyce Graceford, your Grace".

"Oh, bugger – that's a bite in the arse". That was the thing, wasn't it? The ones who spoke the loudest about duty and honour were the ones most prone to breaking against both of those things. "He's going to be the better man. Or at least I bloody well hope he'll be. Both of you, find out what you can about the girl's House and kin. I'll tell him after we've taken Silverhill. One thing to worry about at a time. Meanwhile, strive to expand your network of agents. Reach out to kinsmen, bannermen, friends to your families and yourselves. We'll make arrangements better once Silverhill is ours and we're on the boat downriver to Goldengrove".

"We'll do our best, your Grace" Smalljon bowed, surprisingly graceful for a man his size and stature, his hand by his hip on the pommel of a sword that wasn't there.

"See to it, both of you. Jon, stay". Ebbert bowed a little slower than Smalljon, giving Robb a lingering concerned look, but Robb made a soft gesture with his hand and dismissed him again. He was fine. The whispers in the back of his mind were muffled, drowned out by the concoction, and he had his family with him. The Direwolves were off elsewhere, Grey Wind licking the wounds he had sustained during the impromptu assault on the Silverhill walls. "As you know" he began when he and Jon, and Arya, were alone in the tent once more "I placed Owen in command of the Golden Tooth. He's the only one who's done actual bloody mining that I can trust with my life. He's been told to hold the place should our plans fall to shite, and to obey only the King in the North should I-"

"The bloody Others take us all, Robb, is that what this is about?!" Jon's dark eyes shot open as he realised what he was getting at even as he slowly and meticulously shrugged a shirt over his head. "You've got one bolt through the arm, and suddenly you're making preparations in case you die? What kind of bloody fearful cowardice of caution is this?! You're not going to die!"

"Anyone can die" Arya whispered in the corner, too low for Jon to hear from where he was standing, and Robb nodded quietly to himself. She was right. And it wasn't simply a matter of "can": it was a matter of "will". Death came for everyone in the end, except for those who lost themselves another way, within the Weirwoods and the minds of their enslaved beasts. Sorcery didn't ward against that, at least. Or perhaps it did. It did wake the dead.

 _Gods, so many things unknown and unanswered_. "Now, there's an order of succession" he ignored his brother's protests and went on undeterred. "If I die, I've sent word to Rickon and Bran. You're to succeed me, and they are to stand behind you in that, not split off on their own claims. If you don't want the crown, put it to one of them, but make sure that you are all in agreement with each other. I don't want my kingdom to fall apart after my death, scarcely half-made up and unformed, because some lord got it in his head to crown another Stark boy. I want my works to be finished, Jon. Father avenged. Our people free. No matter if I'm there or not".

"This is why you had me in on their- their clandestine meeting, isn't it?" Jon questioned, anger flashing in his eyes as he stared across the table at him as Robb moved around it, looking for his cloak and his sword. "To have me learn spycraft? Statecraft? Well, let me tell you this, brother – you are this kingdom. The King in the North. It's too new, too fresh. If you fall, the dream will shatter and the South will come to take it all back. No matter what I do I won't be able to stop that. Don't make any plans on-"

"Jon, I may not have a choice" he reached down into his packing, a large wooden chest toted from camp to camp with some of his things in it. Had he put his sword in there? No, that was right, he had dropped it in the battle under the walls. _Blast_. Now he had to get a new one. "Fortune changes, and sometimes the Gods are fickle. The next bolt might go through my eye. I won't let what I've built thus far crumble. It might not be much yet, but it is mine. Ours. Our ways. Our freedom".

"Freedom can go shove itself, Robb – family matters more to me". Robb looked around to meet his brother's gaze, only to be affixed by the intensity of his stare. "You gave me everything I ever wanted. A name, honour, lands of my own. I swore by the Gods I'd die for you. And I swear this – if either of us is to die, I go to join the Gods and the Ancestors first. Curse me, I wouldn't be able to look Father in the eye otherwise".

"Jon-" Robb looked back, his hand squeezed hard in a skeletal fist. Words failed him, and in furious impotence he lifted his hand to rub at his eyes with his knuckle, the agony of that first vision from long ago lingering in them, having never truly gone away. "I just don't want this to fail. To be for nothing".

"Only our enemies want that" Jon agreed with a nod at last, the tension stretching between them like a bowstring onto the point of breaking. "Will you tell me what you have planned now, at least? With the palanquin and the parley?"

"Remember that time we went hunting as boys, out in the edge of the Wolfswood? That one time when Jory Cassel took us because the huntmaster was off elsewhere? The one with the bear?" Jon thought on it a few moments before he nodded. "Aye, like that – but swords instead of shouting. Don't act unless I tell you to, but see it done. Aye?"

"Aye" Jon nodded back breathing out hard through pursed lips. "You are certain you can do this? That you can keep your mind straight? Because of your shoulder and all-"

"I've killed much too many men to let a sodding hole in my shoulder hold me back" he grunted and reached around for a shirt, or at least something to cover himself with. "Or the damn concoction Ebbert gave me. See to the works allotted, would you?"

"Aye" Jon bowed in an almost mocking fashion, or it would have been had it not been sincere beyond the power of mere words to convey. "Your will be done, my king. Always". He stood straight and headed for the flaps of the tent, pausing in the entrance to look back at him over his shoulder. Robb saw him smile. "The King in the North".

"Aye" Robb whispered into the silence once Jon was gone. "King in the bloody North". Silent now, except for the throbbing down his arm. Quiet, and lonely.

"Did you forget about me?" Arya had been quiet in the background of the tent for hours now, moving from dagger to dagger in the sharpening as she had watched over Ebbert tending to his wound. She didn't trust any of them, Robb noted, and why should she? After all she had seen, trust was no doubt something hard gained for her. Reserved for family. And only some members of her family at that.

He doubted that after everything that had happened between the two sisters she had any love for Sansa left in her heart.

"Of course I didn't" he told her as he looked around back at her while she put all her knives back away onto her person – one each in the sides of her new high-shafted riding boots, the others in her belt and once strapped to the leather vambrace of her off-hand sleeve – before she made a high jump off the table and landed with both feet on the ground with feline grace. "I always know you're there. You and Jon both, especially when Grey Wind, Nym or Ghost are close by. And the same goes for you as it does for Jon, Arya. 'If I shall die tomorrow, promise you'll speak of me, over my pyre'-"

"-'that you died a mighty hero, with your face towards the fire'?" she finished for him, cocking her head to the side, her hair falling dark before her eyes. She had allowed Jon to cut it, trim the jagged strands that crowned her head until it didn't look quite so choppy anymore. It would grow out in time, and she had already bound the hair on the top of her pate back while she let the rest hang loose. Stark fashion that, the way Father had worn it. Like how Jon and Robb now wore it, too. "I've heard the stupid ballad too. And no. When you die your bones are to be brought back to Winterfell".

"Like Father's should be". Still the remains of Eddard Stark and Ice, the ancestral blade of their family, remained in King's Landing. In the hands of the Lannisters. He felt the rage rise within him again at the mere thought of it, as familiar as the inside of his own heart to him. And just as full of warmth.

She knew how the anger came over him, and, bless her heart, she understood, turning his thoughts to other paths. "I won't become Lord of Winterfell, Robb. Girl, remember? Means that you, Jon, Bran, Rickon, uncle Benjen and Sansa are ahead of me. It's not fair, I bloody well know, but-"

"Whomsoever first made up the rules that said that girls weren't allowed to inherit as boys was a complete arse, aye?" he asked her as he glanced back at his map, a smile pulling at the corner of his lips as he remembered something. "I promised I'd give a Lordship and five hundred gold dragons to whomever brought you back to us, safe and sound. But you brought yourself back. Should have known that you never needed anyone to safe you, not when you've gotten this dangerous. The question is, what do you want me to-?"

"I want the Lordship" she told him plainly, no hesitation at all on her voice. He looked her over and thought on it. She certainly looked lordly enough now, dressed like a little lordling in dark woollen trousers, a white linen tunic striped in grey, a fencer's quilted vest and her new high boots. If not for the fine cast to her features and her voice's pitch anyone could have assumed she was a boy. Highborn, every inch of her. She had dirtied her clothes already, but that was expected of her. Unlike Mother and Father, he had no inkling to forcing her into bustled she didn't want to wear. "And not a shite one, neither!"

"Of course you do" he nodded. Again, nothing that he hadn't been expecting from her. Not the old her, and not the new her either. "But all I've got on hand are shite ones. Well, except for the Golden Tooth. I intent to keep the bloody thing. Recompense for all my troubles, that. You happen to know anything about mining, do you?" She stared up at him, grey eyes blinking. "Thought not. How about the Wolf's Den? It's on the mouth of the White Knife, and the Manderley's have passed the succession rights onto me. I could make you the heiress to the Lordship of-"

"No boys" she stated firmly, the words coming out of her more than just a little juvenile. "I mean, I don't think it's fair. I mean, if it's mine, shouldn't it be mine by right? As, I mean, inheritance and whatnot and- and I don't want it stolen away by some boy if-"

"Arya Stark" Robb cleared his voice and spoke up, the tone of his voice made as if to address his people in a matter of state. "For the service you did myself and my kin by saving yourself, and for being the fiercest young woman alive in the world, I bequeath onto you the Lordship of the Wolf's Den. Henceforth it shall be a Ladyship, and it shall pass, along with your name, to your daughters, and your daughters' daughters, along the female line of your descendants. To tend and protect, to steward over in my royal name and the name of my House, from this time onto the end of time".

She stared back up at him, her face as impassive and cold as the towers of Winterfell. "Those are just words" she protested at last. "I mean, you can say them all you like, but unless you do it in front of people they don't really matter, do they?"

"I'll send the message to Maester Luwin, tell him to put your name down and draw up something stately looking" he tried as well as he could to seem cocky, to seem sure of himself. "And I'll send word to Lord Manderly. If he's wont to let holdings in his Lordship pass to a woman he can go suck on a salty sausage. I've handed his son pillaging rights to Fairisle. He shouldn't bark overly much".

In face of his good humours she stood impassive, blinking up at him. He thought he saw something in her eyes, something familiar and close. Something like the Arya he had used to know. "I want to-" she said, something choked on her voice, before she changed her mind. "You're good at this. Being king, and all. I didn't think you were going to be. Honest!" she exclaimed once she saw the expression that he made. "I mean, I never thought about it even. But you're good at it. I've seen other armies, Robb. Evil men, needing only knives. Names. You keep them good, Robb".

"I keep them on a tight leash. I don't fool myself – I know what would have happened if I set all of them loose on the Riverlands. Leechlord Roose and some of the others makes Amory Lorch and the Mountain seem like half-measures". He reached up to rub his eye, stopping only when he felt the stinging pain therein. "And yet now I've let them slip their bounds, to burn all the Westerlands. As revengeance for the sacking of the Riverlands. The innocent will die for the faults of their lords and masters and the soldiers that fought for them. North, South, east or west – the Smallfolk get buggered as we wage our lordly wars".

"Such it is" Arya shrugged, visibly uncaring, and Robb searched her eyes for any shred of mercy living there, finding none but the cold and the swiftness of the silent blade. "But it's better than the rest, isn't it? Most don't even care. Five kings in this war, and four out of five are shite. Not you, Robb". Slowly, frowning at herself, she reached out for his hand, taking his forefinger and his middle finger in a soft grip from below, looking up at him with her grey Stark eyes. "You're not like the others. Not yet, anyway. Whatever it is you have, what Father had, the thing Jon and I- – don't lose it. Promise you won't, will you? No matter what anyone says". _Forsake honour. Winter is coming, little king. And the Cold knows no mercy_.

"I promise I won't become a tyrant, that I'll always care" he nodded to her in all the severity he could muster before he closed his eyes and collected himself. "Now, Lady of Wolf's Den, I've got to wash my face and find my crown. And a sword. You go on after Jon. See if you can't frighten a few people". She opened her mouth and drew in breath to speak, but he knew what she was going to ask about. "We'll speak about your desire to be Bolton's squire when we're on the ship southwards. Well" he jerked his head at the entrance of the tent. "Off you go. Aye?"

"Ye- aye" she replied and headed off, leaving him alone in the tent at last. And with the herbs of Ebberts potion clouding his thoughts, making the whispers fade into the far recesses of his mind along with the link to Grey Wind, he could, for the first time in what felt like an age, be truly alone.

Honestly, he didn't care for it much.

His power leaving him he sank back down on his chair with a forced-out sigh through bared teeth. One bloody moment of respite – that was all he asked for. One moment when everyone wasn't pulling at him to do his duty or lead a war or avenge the wrongs of his family. To lay down his weapons and his crown and fall back into a soft embrace. To sleep on a bed of roses, surrounded by her scent.

"Gods, I miss her" he whispered to the empty air around him, no one but him listening. "Won't be long now". He comforted himself with that thought. Soon he'd see her again.

Soon.

Lord Serrett was not a physically impressive man. Aging yet surviving as he had, he had been of age with the late Lord Jon Arryn of the Vale, Robb's brother's namesake. Few of that generation remained in power throughout the realm savaged by the War of the Usurper and before that by the War of the Ninepenny Kings. So many battles and revolts – and they wondered why he wanted the North separate from the rest of the continent.

At sunset the man left the gates of Silverhill with a following of knights and bannermen, riding under the banner of the Serrett peacock on a cream-coloured field, ever so resplendent in his fine armour: an armour made to fit him in his youth, not as he was now. Robb met the man at the tent placed at their convenience on the open field before the walls and dry moat of Silverhill, the banners of House Stark surrounding it on all sides along with his own personal levy, troops led by Jon. As he greeted the man as befitted a lord, far more than the Westerlander swine deserved, he quietly signalled his brother, who in silence proceeded to surround the Serrett men with his own.

Within the tent, with a few close guards and Arya at his side he held parley with Lord Serrett as the musicians, led by Rymund with his harp and his iron gaze, played to entertain them as Edric served them wine. True Southron curtesy. Serrett hadn't been expecting that.

Which had been Robb's intention all along. For the longest time they spoke of idle things, about the ships still in the Silverhill harbour and the run of the river south, about trade and the harvest and the times. Lord Serrett was certainly not physically imposing, but he seemed a shrewd man, clever enough to know to bow when circumstance had forced him into a corner by sword point. He was, however, slighty set in his ways and his notions on how the world functioned, as most tended to be when growing old.

Which was why it so surprised him, and all the others in the tent, when Robb asked the musicians to play _the Rains of Castamere_ to them. He even sang along with it for a little bit.

"- _now the rains weep o'er his hall, and not a soul to hear_ " he went along with the last few notes as they faded away onto the coldness of the falling night before he looked onto Lord Serrett, with his pattern baldness and thin arms, profoundly unsettled, before he gave him a smile that would have made Greatjon proud. "They are powerful, the Lannisters. Wealthy, great in number, led by a man who all but ruled the Seven Kingdoms for the last three decades under two different kings. It will not be easy, Lord Serrett" he had assured him "but I will kill the Lannister lion. I will hang Tywin Lannister's head from the saddle of my horse. I will have his Kingslayer son's and his incestuous daughter's skulls sowed into the furrows I leave behind when I burn Lannisport to the ground. I will tear Casterly Rock down stone by stone until there is nothing left of them to weep over. I will end their line and their House. These are not idle threats. These are things that I will do".

 _These are mummery_. A farce merely. But it had the desired effect. Once he had made it clear that there would be no revengence from the Lannisters, with there not being any Lannisters left in power after the war was ended, and that Silverhill would not be pillaged nor mistreated should he surrender, Lord Serrett was quick to submit. Luckily enough for him. Jon had all but stripped all his men of their swords already. If he hadn't bowed his head and let himself be cowed he would have been held hostage against the commanders of the city defenders.

The only ones who suffered in the occupation of Silverhill were the owners of the individual ships in the harbour. All of them, from the smallest vessels as fishing boats to the solitary dromond amongst the lot, were claimed by right of conquest by House Stark. That dromond led the small navy south the very next day, ships filled to the brim with Robb's contingent of the Northern army. Rich as it was, he had no intention of doing anything more than claim the lion's share of the city's wealth. He had no wish to rule over Westermen or Westerland holdings.

With Arya and Jon, the latter almost green in the face, he stood at the forecastle of that great ship and faced south that morning as the sun rose over their heads. They were headed due South, for Margaery and Mother. Within a few days travel downstream they'd be there.

He didn't know if it was a trick of the light, but he thought that he could see Arya smile.

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** This chapter seemed as easy to write as the last one at first, but the latter parts of it dragged on a bit. However, the next chapter is almost complete already. You won't have to wait long for Margaery's triumphant return into the centre spotlight of this story.

This chapter was intent on asking two questions – how does Robb deal with failure in the field, and how does the other Northern lords deal with and think about the sudden increase in the number of Skinchangers around. Also, setting up some later parts of the story.

Lastly - I got a review for the last chapter that was in Spanish. Honestly, my Russian is better than my Spanish, though I think the reviewer asked me to provide some Roose POV. Maybe. Or maybe it just asked me to think about Roose in a more amorous way. This, dear reader, is for you in particular. And also for the rest of you. ;-)

Believe me when I say that we're just getting started. I hope you'll like it. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	15. Together

Chapter Fifteen – Together

* * *

 ** _Margaery_**

As the wheels beneath the carriage came across bumps in the road Margaery was rocked back and forth, but the butterflies in her stomach had nothing to do with queasiness.

Her Mother picked at the collar of her dress as their wheelhouse made its way down to the riverside piers outside the great yellow walls of Goldengrove, fussing like she was four years old. "Oh, that you are to be betrothed properly this time!" she said aloud. "It'd be best for Lord Stark that he is more patient than Renly. These foolish men and their need to hurry-"

"I want a proper wedding this time, Mother" she told her with a smile and took her hand by her neckline, holding it softly to implore her to not worry. "Robb promised me that". From across of her in the wheelhouse, sitting with Meredyth Crane and Aunt Janna opposite her and Mother on cushioned seats of green velvet stitched with gold and silver tread, she heard Grandmother scoff loudly, and she turned her head around to look at her, still holding Mother's hand in hers. "What is it, Grandmother dear? Is something the matter?"

"Of course something is the matter" Lady Olenna gave her a level look, clearly displeased despite having reunited with Margaery and her grandsons a mere fortnight earlier. Those news had to vex her to no end, no doubt about it. Margaery almost knew what she was going to say before she said it. "It would be best for everyone if you dispensed with ceremony. Before the Lannisters scramble to meet us and your Northern boy changes his mind. Fancies are always passing". She looked then to Mother, and Margaery flinched already. "You'd best remember the Stark boy's title, Hightower slattern. Your memory is worse than mine, and you lack even the excuse of age".

"If you say so, Mother" Mother smiled back, and Margaery cringed inwardly at her tone and the face Grandmother made. Alerie Hightower had never stood up to Olenna Tyrell, never shot back at her despite her pride even after she had married the Lord of Highgarden and given him four children. Margaery had tried to explain it to her – that Grandmother would never respect her unless she spoke up for herself – but Mother had dismissed that out of hand. 'All women loath the ones to marry their sons' she had said. Margaery, again, very much doubted that.

"Don't call me Mother" Lady Olenna corrected as she pulled her thick winter shawls closer around her, her shawl and her stole the only articles of her clothing that bore the Redwyne colours, the rest in Tyrell green and gold. "If I had given birth to you, I am sure that I'd remember. I'm only to blame for your husband, the Lord Oaf of Highgarden.".

"Please, do no fight" Margaery implored, and silence fell. She loved those two women the most of all the others in her world, even though her love for Mother had been something that had waxed and waned over the years. As a child she had clung to Mother's skirts as she watched her brothers being trained to be warriors, but later, when she had come under Grandmother's tutelage, she had held great contempt for her so supposedly weak-willed Mother in her heart along with her jealousy. Then again, a great many women in the Reach were jealous of the Hightower ladies. It was in their blood.

Alerie Hightower had silver-white hair, almost like Grandmother's already despite the two being several decades apart in age, unlike the browns, red and deep tawny gold otherwise held on the heads of the people of the Reach. But Mother's hair had always been like that, just like how Aunt Lynesse had always been brightly golden, just how uncle Humfrey had always been silver-gold.

Such it was for all of Margaery's aunts by Grandfather Leyton – the Valyrian blood of House Hightower, supposedly, stemming from Rhaena Targaryen daughter of the Rogue Prince Daemon and her six daughters with Garmund Hightower, all of whom had married into the extended male family of the House. Many Hightowers had married into the royal dynasty of the dragonlords, now that Margaery came to think of it. As wives, mothers and consorts to Targaryen kings they had reshaped the Seven Kingdoms to a greater extent than even the Tyrells whom they supposedly served. They claimed to be the oldest family in Westeros, sworn to the Gardener kings of the Reach in the olden days long before the Andals came to Westeros, pledged by necessity to the Tyrells after Aegon roasted the Gardeners to cinders on the Field of Fire.

Then again, they also claimed that once, long ago, there had been dragons in Westeros, hatching around and upon Battle Ilse, the island on which the eponymous Hightower had been built. In olden days some Hightowers had called themselves "dragonlords in all but name". Margaery couldn't help but to smile at the foolishness so endemic to historical narrative. Such was it ever, when the grandiose wrote the chronicles of their lines.

Such was it ever.

The wheelhouse came to a slow halt – _blessed be_ – at long last, and by a polite knock a herald announced that he was to open the door, ending any trace of conversation amongst the ladies. By the hands of her handmaidens Margaery was helped out of the wheelhouse with the skirts of her bustles held close around her, and on legs with knees at a slight tremble she stood to greet the grey day over Goldengrove as her family and court unhorsed around her.

Goldengrove with its tall yellowed walls more the colour of peaches than the colour of gold overlooked from its hollowed hill the river that flowed south from the Westerlands, the only waterway due South excepting the Sunset sea coast. Reavers from the Iron Islands had come to drive much of the southwards bound trade inland, down the Ocean Road from Lannisport to Highgarden, and the waterway south from Silverhill had made Goldengrove a place of wealth and influence. House Serrett had intermarried with the esteemed House Rowan many times through history if her lessons were to be remembered, and the guards of the House in their gaudy aurous tabards numbered just as many on the expansive stone docks as the Tyrell guards in steel and green and gold there far beneath the towers on the hill above. Wooden piers jutted far out into the river at its widest point, a far cry from the breadth of the Forks or the Trident to the north but deep and calmly flowing, and at the centre of the banners and the formation on the docks they waited for the ships to tie to port from upstream.

Her father and brothers in their great array and their finest suits of armour had ridden out of the keep before the wheelhouse with their knights at their side, and unhorsed to leave Lady Catelyn to come to the fore of the formation by the docks, to stand with Margaery, Grandmother, Mother and Father there. Cat had ridden though, on her horse along with her men at arms and her escort, and Margaery was miffed at that. She hated going in wheelhouses. All the accursed bumping and jostling around made her feel like a poorly bound down sack of beets and just as bruised. She wanted to ride too, but no, that simply _wouldn't do_ for a lady. Lady Stark had the freedom to do such things because she was the nominal head of her House and the mother to the King in the North. The same sort of freedom was within her grasp, tantalisingly close, but for all its proximity made the walls of her relative captivity seem closer.

And all the closer now, for around the bend in the river from rocky hills and cliffs above a small fleet of maybe a dozen ships came, flying Northern banners. Behind her, along with Loras and Garlan, she could overhear Willas speak quietly. "Condon, Whitehill, Cassel, Cerwyn, Holt, Long" he listed the banners other than the Direwolf Stark that flew over the ships, a few repurposed merchant cogs and two galleys leading them, their railings set with shields and spears as the men transported on them formed ranks to disembark under shouted commands. "Winterfell's levies and men. The Heartland North, if I'm not mistaken".

"Where is the rest?" Loras could be heard asking as Margaery watched the banners flap on the breeze, the Direwolves flying above all others, leaping on the wind as the gale caught the edge of her cloak and whipped it about behind her. "The Northern army has almost thirty thousand men all in all, counting the Riverlords and only the men afield in the South. That there is barely enough for four thousand".

"Making havoc about the Westerlands, no doubt" Garlan supplied, seeming aloof as he watched the men crowding the decks like a hawk would watch prey. "Four thousand Northern screamers, though. Wolves. Numbers don't matter as much as reputation when news carry-" his words were cut short when the largest ship in the little fleet came boldly into sight, for it was a majestic thing.

Margaery knew a little of ships. She had always endeavoured to learn, hoping to one day cross the seas and see the Free Cities when she was but a girl, and she knew that the lumbering thing coming down the river was a warship through and through, a dromond of great size. It had double rows of oars, counting nearly two hundred with half on each side, and soldiers in grey and white with iron lances and pike in hand lined the railings and the forecastle and aftcastle, the Direwolf banner flying proud from the tops of its masts and its banners. Above the ram at its prow, the metal-reinforced wood cutting through the water in a bronze shine, painted in white against its ornate hull, was a name in white painted, and Margaery could see the Lady Stark flinch beside her at the sight. Its sails were the most striking though – both white and new, the one on its main mast had been stitched with the front-facing face of a snarling grey wolf. Robb's personal coat of arms in huge proportion. The Direwolf, fangs showing and jaws parted in a bloodthirsty roar.

And so the procession on the docks waited and watched in silence as the _Lord Eddard_ made its way into the port in the shadow of Goldengrove. Around the buildings of the docks the crowd of villagers and smallfolk, people in service to House Rowan, stood too, in awe of it all. The dromond's crew tied it to, dropping its anchor and furled its sails, and then, as they stood there waiting, a horn blast broke the silence.

"The King in the North!" the cheer rose from the ship and the vessels all about, again and again, threefold, and then the gangplank was pushed out and landlocked, and the King there mentioned came ashore.

Robb looked older. It was odd. He was a little taller than when she had last seen him – of course, he was a young man still and it was to be expected – but also paler, and his armour was scratched and mended all over. His pauldrons looked mismatched, and the sword at his hip was one she didn't recognise. But it was Robb. _Her_ Robb. He smiled at her when he saw her, and all others seemed to disappear from her mind as he came down the gangplank towards her.

"Margaery" he greeted her, and as she looked at him he seemed almost aghast, confused. "You look" he began as she noticed that his beard had been freshly trimmed, his hair washed and the crown on his head polished to a shine. "You look like you". It was like with the flowers, wasn't it? Blunt words hiding deeper meaning.

He wore her cloak. She met his blue eyes, and the giddiness in her stomach vanished. _He's been wearing it all along_. She felt like she was flying.

"And you look tired" she replied, smiling back at him as she plucked at the sleeves of her winter gown. Highgarden gowns were more or less the same for summer or winter, though the winter ones were marginally thicker in the bustle, waist and bust, and all the parts the summer gowns let be bare across the back and the arms the winter gowns filled in with double layers of thick lace over velvet. It occurred to her that this was the first time he saw her in green. She had to restrain her hands and clasp them before her waist and her girdle come sword-belt as not to reach up into her hair and undo the ornate arrangement Elinor and Alla had done there as she fidgeted. At the look in his eyes, pure fire, her cheeks warmed over. He wasn't angry or sentimental. It was more like he was starved. "I-"

And then the illusion of tranquillity passed as she heard shouts come from the crowd and the ship as a giant shape leapt over the side of the ship and landed on four paws on the stone of the docks, as easy of motion as it was giant. Coming up behind Robb it was hulking presence, fierce and titanous – only for the shadows of her fear to pass as she noticed the rapidly wagging tail. "Grey Wind!" she exclaimed and held out her arms, and the monster of a wolf, to her parents' utter terror, bounded over to her like a much too overgrown pup and smelled at her, making happy noises all the while.

"He's missed you" Robb told her as he urged his battle beast back, somehow doing despite the Direwolf's great size and weight, and as their eyes met they silently said the things they could not say out loud due to the laws of custom and properness. There was a thick section of linen wound around the wolf's front and back, the broadest at his side. Had he been injured?

"I missed him too". Barely had she said that, however, before two other shapes followed Grey Wind over the side of the ship, dismissing the gangplank as if it was folly to follow what Margaery assumed was their brothers. Some small part of her mind had considered Grey Wind an abnormality, an ordinary wolf pup overgrown by virtue of sorcery or an accident of birth. That small part of her, the one that still clung to rationality, abandoned that notion when she came across the other two Direwolves. They were, most definitely, animals of their own right.

The white one, the one with the red eyes, was even taller than Grey Wind, who in turn had noticeably grown since she last had seen him, sniffed her and quietly huffed at her at what seemed to be Grey Wind insistence. The other one, smaller and leaner, its eyes somehow darker, only smelled her once before it – no, she – huddled back and bared her teeth when her brothers seemed to implore her to be bolder. She seemed wilder than the others, somehow. If that was even possible.

Robb pried his eyes away from her to look at his mother, who quietly stepped forth and embraced him, the two holding each other as they spoke quietly to each other before separating. He then turned to Mace and Alerie Tyrell, and in any other instance Father would have been affronted that he was greeted last of all of them. Father and Mother both, however, were busy staring at the Direwolves, Mother half hiding behind Father and Father's hand on the grip of his sword. "Lord Paramount Mace, Lady Alerie Tyrell of Hightower" he began and offered Father his wrist. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you both. I'm Robb-"

"Hark!" a voice boomed from aboard the Lord Eddard, and at Smalljon's shouted words Robb made a face that vanished quickly, contained but not before Margaery had spotted it. "You stand in the presence of Robbard Stark, the first of his name! The Wolf of the Whispering Wood! Lord of Winterfell, Lord of the Golden Fang, King of the Trident, King of Winter! High chief of the First Men! Slayer of lions and unmaker of armies! The King in the North!"

"Oh, for-" he muttered out before he restrained himself, turning back to Mace with an apologetic look. "That's Jon Umber. We call him Smalljon, because his da is even louder. He's" he paused and waited for the right word "eager. Don't worry about Grey Wind, Ghost or Nymeria. They're harmless. Mostly". Nymeria was a woman's name, so it had to be the she-wolf, and the white one was quiet, silent, ghastal. Their names were easy. Mother clearly did not believe him though, not with how Nymeria passed on by her to settle before Cat- the older woman was trembling, her hand shaking as she reached out to touch Nymeria's fur. Her eyes flew open as she looked to Robb, and Father's greetings were delayed further.

"Is-?" Cat's face whitened as she asked, her voice was breaking, and smiling Robb nodded before he looked over his shoulder, back at the ship that bore his father's name. Down the gangplank from the ship Robb's honour guard was departing, many of the haggard and worse for the wear after a long time of war spent solely in the field, but a few amongst them Margaery did not recognise. The man in the leather doublet with thin sandy hair and a chain hanging loose around his neck, one fellow of emaciated strength who's hair had been coloured faintly green in some Northern ritual – or so she assumed – one was a man all in black and lacking cloak as if the wind did not touch him, and then there was a boy lordling with a thin sword at his hip like that of a water dancer. Little, perhaps no older than eight or nine years old, slight and pale. Cat blinked when seeing the last one in particular.

As that boy came upon the edge of the pier of the docks lady Cat broke from the formation, pushing past her son and the Direwolves and all the rest to come onto where he was. He looked up at her as she took her in her arms, falling to her knees to pull him close to her. Margaery realised that it wasn't a boy when he, she, finally spoke that one word. "Mother".

"Sweetling" Cat all but sobbed, blinking through the tears in her eyes as she put one hand to the hair on her daugther's head, fingers reaching through the strands as if she was used to them being longer. "Arya! My sweet little girl". Arya, in turn, weathered Cat's embrace as if she was confused, standing stock-still and statue-like, her arms flat along her sides, a blank expression on her face. "Don't worry, sweetling" Catelyn whispered close into her ear, and in the silence around the two all attending could hear her words. "Mother's here now. You are safe. Praise the Old Gods and the New, you are safe!"

Slowly, frowningly, Arya lifted her hands and laid her arms around her mother, her fingers closing around the fabric of Cat's dress as she held her tight, like she was drowning and afraid to fall back under. Her eyes, grey and cold, vanished from view as she burrowed her face into Cat's shoulder.

The man beside the mother and daughter, the one in black and without a cloak, as if the cold didn't bother him in the least, dark and sullen-eyed and tall, smiled slightly when seeing the two embrace, a smile that did not reach his eyes. As if sensing his presence Cat raised her head and looked up at him. "Thank you" she said through the tremble on her voice. "Thank you".

"I didn't save her, Lady Stark" he replied as his smile faded away, his Northern drawl even thicker than Robb's. "She did". He then walked over towards them, approaching Robb's side, looking the Margaery and Father and her brothers and all the knights beyond, but on her in particular he lingered before he put his head close to Robb's. "Slender, brown hair, big doey eyes – I should have betted. Mate, you have very particular fancies".

"Oh, shove off" Robb mouthed back before he looked back to Father, Mother and her. "Truthfully, I did not intend to disrupt the formalities. Or whatever it was that you planned with all" he looked about, to the crowd and the lords and the attendants and the knights all about "all this. This is, ehm, good pomp. A thousand pardons". He saw Mother's and Father's blinking looks, the two stunned, neither of them particularly adept at handling sudden shifts of the world, before he looked back to the tall and dark fellow. "This is-" he stopped and suddenly grinned. "Smalljon! Would you do the honours?"

"Hold a moment now, your Grace" the tall man implored back as the Umber heir grinned and drew in a mighty breath. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves and do something silly-"

"Hark!" Smalljon boomed out again, and in standing much closer Margaery thought she could all but feel her eardrums bend inwards under the power of his shout. "Presenting Jon Stark, the get of Brandon, Torrhen and Cregan through Eddard Stark! Lord of the Whispering Wood, Commander of the Guard, the White Wolf! _Yr_ and Heir Presumptive to the Kingdom of the North!" Jon gave Robb a sour look, and at once she could tell the family resemblance. There was the same wildness about them, far more pronounced in Jon, but still there, along with the cast to their cheekbones, their chins and their lips. Though Smalljon was far from done. He seemed to be having too much fun to keep quiet.

"Presenting Arya Stark, the get of Sansa, Lynara and Lyarra through Catelyn Stark!" he went on as Cat rose from her daughter's embrace and held her by the hand like a toddler of three as they walked to stand with Robb and Jon, her cloak swept over to warm the girl too. "Lady of the Wolf's Den by her own right, rider of Direwolves, slayer of men! Sixth in line to inherit the Kingdom of the North! Presenting Catelyn Stark, begetter of Kings! Lady dowager to Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell, Lady Heiress to Riverrun and Harrenhal-!"

"They know Mother, Smalljon!" Robb called out and silenced the man, and he laughed with all the other Northmen around him as the Reach lords and ladies watched in relative and shifting confusion. "You don't have to introduce her!"

"Sorry, your Grace!" the young Umber grinned back. "Couldn't help myself!"

"Aye, that's well enough of that for now" Robb shrugged then, turning back to Father and her with the same smile as before, the smile that was meant for her and her alonge judging by the way his eyes locked with hers. "Can we go up to the keep now, Lord Mace? My men've been on the ships for days on ends now, and you all must suffer in the briskness out here. Introductions can wait a wee while, can they not?"

It was then, Margaery noted, that Father found out two things. Firstly, that the Northerners did not stand very much at all on ceremony. Secondly, that he liked Robb Stark very much. Within moments he and Robb were loudly conversing and jesting with one another as Father introduced him to Lord Rowan and some of the others while Smalljon, an almost emaciated Ser Robar Royce and that Maester-chained warrior – was it Ebbert, by any chance? He was hardly recognisable – followed him like loyal guards, Jon Stark hovering like a shadow behind them while the Direwolves gathered around Lady Cat and Arya.

Margaery pushed past the wolves and made to crouch down before Arya, Cat giving her an encouraging look even as she pulled her cloak closer about her daughter. "Good day to you, Arya" she smiled at the young woman, who gave nothing back but a glare of cold suspicion. "I'm Margaery. Margaery Tyrell. I'm not sure if you have ever-"

"Summer-Sun" Arya said suddenly, and Margaery and Cat blinked both. "Robb thinks about you all the time. Grey Wind says that, at least. You smell strangely". Margaery frowned, restraining herself from raising her arm and smelling her wrist. She had bathed in rosewater that morning before she scented herself with perfume and pouches of fragrance sown into her gown. "Past all the rest" Arya began to scowl in confusion "there's something old in you. It's a bit like Neversleep, only more distant yet deep". She blinked and shook her head ever so slightly, glancing over to Nymeria in seeming reprimand. "You're pretty. You wear pretty dresses" she then went on to state in a firm manner. "Sansa would like you".

"Well" Margaery was utterly confused at the girl's strange behaviour but didn't put it past her. She had been taught courtly ways by the Queen of Thorns herself. "I hope you'll come to like me to. I hope that we will be sisters one day soon".

Arya blinked back at her, impassive. "As long as you're not too much like Sansa" she seemed to gradually admit with a curt nod, and Margaery stood, looking the small girl over. If Robb was to be believed she was ten, which might very well be true but for the fact that Arya was as thin as a rake and as slender as a reed. But for her boyish clothes and hair she had fine features, and her grey eyes were quite striking. She would become quite a beauty one day – if she shirked britches and tunic and doublet for dresses and learned courtly ways. Which, given circumstances, did not seem likely.

"Aye, the ship?" Robb answered Father's question as the horses of his kin and his honour guard were in the process of being let off the equine barge on one of the smaller piers attended by servants and squires. "It was Lord Serrett's flagship, I believe. They began building it around the time of the Greyjoy Rebellion, though it wasn't finished time for even its maiden voyage. Last morning the lads worked it over. Put up the sail they had been working on since we set off from Silverhill, repainted the hull, renamed it-" he saw the look Cat gave him and paused. "Aye. Right of conquest, so it is".

"Thus be it ever!" Father belted out, and she could tell by Robb's expression that he didn't agree with Lord Tyrell even a little bit. "Now, we shall head up for the hall. Surely you are wary after your-"

"Now, now, bring him over here first!" Grandmother's seat had been folded out and cushioned by the servants before the wheelhouse's steps and door, and before the procession made its way up the winding path past the houses and onto the forecastle before Goldengrove's drawbridge approached the Queen of thorns. She didn't seem to impressed by Margaery's reckoning, but then again she never did for anyone. "Solid enough, I suppose – though your heraldry could be less snarling and more regal" she scoffed at him, and Robb blinked, seemingly stunned. "Are you an oaf, boy?"

"I don't believe I am" he answered, and Margaery couldn't help but smile as she went to stand beside him, measuring Grandmother all the while. "Then again, I feel oafish at times. Can a man ever really know if he's an oaf, especially a powerful man? All the ones around him would praise him and call him shrewd no matter his faults. Perhaps I am an oaf, and no one's ever bothered to tell me".

Grandmother looked at him in silence for a while before she nodded. "You'll have to do, I suppose".

All the way up to the castle, riding by Robb's side on Arya Stark's horse as the young lady herself sat in the saddle before her mother clutching at Cat's cloak, she could not stop smiling.

She was relieved, beyond ken. Not that the weeks preceeding Robb's arrival and following Grandmother's had been hard or dreary. They had been… usual. They had been like they always had been, but now it was as if she noticed how empty they had always been. Scheming and dancing and empty revelry, and for what? It wasn't in service of honour or vengeance or a noble ideal, it was wealth and poetry for the sake of wealth and poetry. The Northerners lived so very different, didn't they? They had showed them that. How they would all march South to war by one man's word because of his name. Somehow, she had found out during her time at Goldengrove, that the name of Stark meant much more than she had ever realised.

She had first begun to understand when she had taken to her embroidery more than she had ever before out of frustration. Everyone, even Garlan, ever so dutiful in all other things for the sake of "properness" and the "holy order of things" had gently but firmly dismissed her when she asked to be taught the sword. She was too delicate, she supposed that they thought. Not meant for martial matters. And when she had her boss set up in the courtyard and a bow borrowed from a guard in hand along with arrows the stares and probing questions made her stop. So she took to her embroidery and lessons about the North with renewed vigour, keeping it up even when Father, Mother, Garlan and Grandmother came from Highgarden with their mighty entourage in tow.

Stitching the entirety of the House of Stark for the last hundred years onto a cloth even the size of a sail proved to be a challenge. The House tended to bloom out and bubble with numbers, as Cregan Stark's ten children with his three consecutive wives and Beorn Stark's seven children with Lorra Royce, Robar Royce's great-great-great grandmother. Then, in flashes, it tended to die out, only a few members of the House remaining as if they were the sole survivors of a sudden flood, standing alone on the cliffs in the raging water as the bodies bloated around them. Such it is in the North, Cat had explained to her. Not only did wars and raiders and the occasional infighting kill them – they seemed to be awfully eager to join battle in the South, that principal Northern house – but sicknesses, accidents, hunting mishaps, and, at times when entire branches of the family were wiped out, cold and starvation.

Nothing like such would happen to her or Robb or any of his kin and family, she swore to herself. Not while the North was allied with the Reach. When the food grew scarce, when the snows fell and the white winds blew, Highgarden would come to the aid of Winterfell. She had been present for much of when Grandmother and Willas drafted the terms of the alliance – which also happened to be her marriage contract. Or, at least, the terms of it. And she had pressured them into putting a clause about preferential trade laws, taxes and tariffs in there.

It was an odd thing – being but a piece in the great game, but being the centre piece just the same. As it was, everything revolved around her. The Tyrell efforts in the War, the coming alliance.

That was it, wasn't it? The centre piece was a piece and a pawn just like all the others. But still it was the most important one.

She'd still rather not be a piece at all.

The banquet they held that night was less rowdy than the ones she had experienced at Pinkmaiden. Perhaps it was because there were fewer Mormonts and clansmen and Umbers around to shout and have rows and bash pitchers over each other's heads, but she thought it was something else. Part of it was Robar Royce's fault. Somehow he met Alyce, Alyce in her airy maroon dress meant to hide the fact that already her stomach was swelling, and between his stunned silence and her teary eyes a damper was put on Margaery's own following of ladies even before they both vanished from the banquet without a trace. She had Elinor and Megga look for them, but with the ruckus around them and the severe droning of Lord Rowan from his seat of high honour just up from hers and Robb's there was only so much she could afford to do. She had to attend, after all. It was her prerogative as the Rose of Highgarden.

Something else did put a damper on the festivities. She noticed how lean and hollow-cheeked the Northeners were, bleak of face and wan, tired to a one. Many weeks on the march had taken its due, even as the lands they had marched into had been softer than they had been used to. Some were worse than others, though. The lot with only a few attending, the ones relegated to the rear recesses of the hall while the rest of their number ate and drank with the troops in the camp outside the castle walls. Motley, all of them, down to a one, knights and smallfolk drinking side by side, deferring all to the man with the coloured hair. No, it wasn't colour. His hair simply was green by nature. And soon she recognised him as Roren Bulwer. Neversleep himself, almost unrecognisable.

As the musicians played, Laena of Lys playing first lute amongst the rest while Rymund watched her pluck almost unblinking from over Robb's shoulder, she ate and drank sparsely in comfort. Robb sat at her side, and though they did not speak anything else than pleasantries and short words. In all the noise and the ruckus, as a gathering of Cerwyn and Stark men and women rose up to the clapping of a hundred hands to dance about, arm in arm in rings before the tables, it wasn't the right time to speak of gentle matters.

She watched instead, and listened as she idly petted Grey Wind over the head as he lay happily panting at her feet. She watched Cat and Arya Stark sitting on the same seat, the girl doing perfunctory motions at her mother's behest as if a mimicry of normalcy, none of Cat's smiles reaching her face, none of the happiness showing in her eyes. And she saw Jon, Robb's brother despite the lack of overt fraternal resemblance, moving amongst the men down far below the high table, casting dark looks up at Grandmother. And Grandmother watched him in turn, old eyes as clear as day. Margaery knew that look. In her experience it didn't bode well.

"Your words, Lord Umber". She overheard Willas sitting by the side of the gargantuan Umber heir Smalljon, his words spoken in a polite tone as made smalltalk while watching the crowd and the entertainers. "I must confess that I don't know them, though I know your coat of arms. It is quite" she could tell that Willas was holding back from making a face "memorable".

"'All chains but one', little man" Smalljon boomed back and laid a massive hand over Willas's shoulder, grinning like a fool with his beard filled with foam from ale and stout. "It used to be 'No Chains May Hold Us', you ken? But it changed over the years. See, all other chains may break or be broken but for the one that binds our House to Stark. Stark! Stark! The King in the North!" he lifted his tankard, and a cheer rose at his proclamation.

Margaery couldn't help but to smile at his eagerness even as Dacey Mormont reached out and made to bop him across the head, saying that she knew for a fact that his House Words didn't mean quite that or what he thought they meant. Then again, the Words of a family were supposed to be grandiose and both vague and specific at the same time. They meant quite a few things.

"He's quite enthused" she looked to Robb – only to find him looking back at her with a smile splitting his face in twain. Past the paleness and the ring both around and within his eyes he seemed almost like a boy again, and she reached out to take his hand, putting her smaller fingers inside his larger ones. "What are you thinking about?"

"That I'm very happy to see you again". He held her hand gently, as if he was afraid that he would break her fingers with his strength. "That finally, for once, I might have a while to rest". His eyes broke from her a hint, a frown appearing on his face, and she turned to follow his gaze past her to see Aunt Jenna and Merry Crane approaching her seat.

"Your Grace, Lady Margaery" Meredyth curtsied along with Jenna, her eyes downcast in an attempt at shyness that was nothing short of perplexing. "Lady Olenna humbly requests your presence in her chambers. She says she wishes to speak to you tonight regarding certain" she glanced aside to Jenna "arrangements".

"Well then" Margaery nodded and stood, Robb standing alongside with her along with most of the rest of the Northerners around, some crashing to the floor in wobbled drunkenness. "If you would excuse me, your Grace – we must obey our elders. Its late, and I think it is time that I retire for the night. I will see you at dawn, Robb".

"On the morrow" Robb, still holding her hand, brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed them, his blue eyes locked with hers, and by the gesture she felt a thunder in her chest. "Dream sweetly, Margaery". She didn't tarry very much longer, even though it was hard to tear herself away from him. His presence was almost as intoxicating as wine and more easily supped upon, but the Queen of Thorns was not to be disobeyed by her own kin. Led by Meredyth Crane and Aunt Jenna and escorted by Garlan and her ladies-in-waiting she headed for Lady Olenna's chambers.

Grandmother had gotten the warmest and sunniest of the guest suites in the castle, her solar overlooking the tiered gardens of Goldengrove with vast balconies that could be set for an entire soiree come spring and summer, and by the couches and stretches covered in velvet and silk and cushioned richly Grandmother sat, looking up from her knitting as Margaery entered with her following. "All you girls get practicing" she commanded to Margaery's ladies, and all of them, even Alyce, spread out around her and pick up the instruments and books and knitting that were doled out around the solar. They didn't even hesitate.

"Grandmother!" Margaery greeted her happily, but it seemed that Lady Olenna wasn't in the mood at all for joyous tidings. "You retired so soon from the festivities. Are you feeling unwell-?"

"Oh, suspend with the idle yapping, won't you my dear?" Grandmother rolled her eyes and sighed, tutting as she looked up at Margaery before she gestured to the seat beside her. "So" she put her hands in her lap on top of her richly embroidered skirts "your man, the Stark boy. I've certainly seen worse men with greater power. Good shoulders, thick arms, stunning blue eyes – I can see why you singled that one out amongst the lot. Certainly good enough for our ambitions. And he's said that he's willing to put Edric on the throne?"

"Yes, Grandmother" Margaery bent her head, arranging the bustle of her dress around her before she sank down on the cuishions, almost too comfortable. "King Robert-" she saw Grandmother's inclined look and changed her pace to brutal honesty "the Usurper was notorious for his wenching. Beyond Stannis Baratheon and the Baratheon children of King's Landing-"

"The Kingslayer's bastards" Grandmother corrected pointedly, and Margaery smiled to hide her discomfort. "Of the Tyrell girls Alla is the closest to Edric in age. Make her to be his playmate, and tell her to bat her eyes at him and laugh at all his jokes. Soon he'll be in love, as much as fool as all men are at his age and on upwards. We'll betroth them to each other, and we'll have one pet Baratheon bastard on our hands to place on the throne that we can control. Better than Stannis and the Lannister-ruled children. Thus is best" she grumbled "since we are committed to treason either way".

"Joffrey Hills is as mad as a Targaryen, Grandmother. Aerys the third, rather. His brother and sister might be sweet for now according to the word of the land, but they will no doubt show their true colours in time". Or so had Father said. Grandmother scoffed at the foolishness as if taken from Father's mouth itself. It was a justification to ease her conscience, even she knew as much, but by whatever right they could they would. Such was it ever. "This is the right thing, that which we are-"

"Right or wrong – we have no choice by now, so it matters not". Grandmother, of course, was the furthest thing from trying to justify anything. "What does matter is the Stark boy. More specifically, the dark one. Jon, the one they call 'the White Wolf'. He's close to your boy in age. The Northerners listen to him. Should your boy fall in battle or die before his time, they'll turn to him".

"Jon is loyal" she repeated what she had been told and what she had seen of him, the way he deferred to his brother utterly and instinctively. "He is no danger to us or our cause".

"Not to us, perhaps. But authority is only secure as long as it remains unchallenged". She looked down onto the midsection Margaery's gown, and Margaery held back a frown. "Suppose: ten years from now, five – your boy dies. I know you do not want to even imagine it, but for our purposes let us say that he does. Maybe in some battle, maybe drowned at sea, maybe a pox or a flux. It matters not how. He's an eager boy, and there's little history of infertility in our family. By then you will have children. Imagine all that" she reached out and took Margaery by the hand firmly. "Now imagine what happens to your little ones when the Northern crown is contested. Do you honestly think the Northern screamers will let children with more South in them than North rule them?"

"We can trust them, Grandmother" she said, the blush in her cheeks half from fright and half from the thoughts her mind conjured up by those notions. "They love Robb. With a little luck and time-"

"Fortune is a fickle whore, and time is a precious and fleeting thing" Grandmother turned her head around and looked over her shoulder at Megga at the stool by the solar table. "Oh, get your fat fingers off the strings! It's a harp, not a cat you are trying to strangle! Trade with Alla, will you? Maybe you are better with the odes – you certainly like things in your mouth!" She looked back to Margaery while Alla took the harp with Megga with a kind smile as the older girl fought back tears. "There is a matter of succession. To secure your place, and that of my great-grandchildren" she inclined her head meaningfully "something has to be done".

"Do" she supposed that there was a through reason behind Grandmother's concerns, and given that to allay them something had to be done "do you intend violence? That won't ingratiate us-"

"Oh, there is no need for something quite so primitive" Grandmother scoffed and settled back against the cushions. "We don't need to kill him. We just need him out of our way".

The bargaining began at dawn the day after, and sitting at the table with Father on one side and Grandmother on the other she imagined she knew how cattle felt at auction.

"Don't you worry, sweetling" Mother said from behind her, hands upon her shoulder in a reassuring motion as she leant down to whisper into her ear. "It's just a little thing. It's ill at ease now but it will be over soon". Mother knew, after all. She too had been present when they negotiated her betrothal, when they did this, this horse trade. Like she was some manner of commodity. Then again, she supposed that it was what they had to do, with the world the way it was. By a look from Grandmother Mother straightened and left the room along with Loras, leaving Father, Willas and the Queen of Thornes sitting at the table on her flanks with Garlan at her back in his finest armour. Silver and gold, his cloak green and lined with roses and brambles along the edges, the sword at his side seemed a part of him. Every inch of him the perfect ideal of a knight.

"They are late" Garlan pointed out behind them, and Margaery shot a glance aside at Grandmother and Willas beyond her. Punctual dutifulness or annoyance? It was hard to tell with Garlan sometimes.

"I've no notion why. It is not like they were up revelling all night". The bad part of Willas was his tendency towards a biting mood in his more annoyed moments. "Honestly, if I am to feast with these people every night" he grumbled and reached up to rub his brow, dark shadows beneath his eyes "I'd best never stop drinking. The accumulative crapulence will most assuredly kill me".

"They are certainly a cheery people" Father said with a broad smile, and she almost felt pity for him. In his youth he had been as handsome and strong as Robb, though far from as shrewd or martially gifted. He fancied himself a most puissant warrior, but Robb had won more battles in one year than Father had in twenty. Father's single military victory was the fault of Randyll Tarly, even. Now, as had sat with Robb during the feast and spoken to him on matters he thought military he felt indulged. It reminded her of an old horse gone senile, rolling in the summer grass like it thought it was still a foal.

It was the lot of women in the world as it was to all but belong to men. It was not something she liked to think about, something she found good even, but something she had come to accept no matter how it tore at her. Given that she could not help but compare Renly, Father and Robb, and given the choices she'd rather be Robb's possession. But perhaps she wouldn't need to be. Northern women owned land and ruled without being widows. They fought and drank as equals with the men. At least she thought they did. Maybe she-

The door on the other side of the oval room, flanked by a pair of trusted guards, Ser Garvin and Ser Ledon, in their truest and finest armour and surcoats, opened and cut short her thoughts. Smalljon Umber came in first, looking severely disappointed at not having to have announce his leal sire, having to duck under the arch of the door as not to hit his head on the stone. At the corner of her eye she noticed Garlan shift ever so slightly into a ready stance with his hand across the pommel of his sword, a world of difference between him and Smalljon's chainmail and studded umber doublet.

They really were very different. Now, like this, it was almost frightening.

"-and tell Roren to have his men settle. If his men get closer than a hundred paces of the Sept I'll have them find out first-hand what Roose Bolton thinks about fanatics". An answer in an impassable Northern drawl responded, after which Robb followed Smalljon through, scowling. "Bloody would-be sorcerers" he muttered as he went, his eyes coming up to meet Margaery and making him smile so brightly. Like a spot of sunshine on a cloudy day, rays of light breaking through the overcast. She swallowed her uncertainties and gave him as much of a smile back as she could manage to.

"Your Grace!" Father stood from his chair and greeted them jovially as Lady Cat and Jon, the dark one that was supposedly Robb's brother even according to Grandmother, followed. Cat wore a dress she didn't recognise even from their long time spent together, one in black and blue with a white shawl over her shoulders – colours of grief, Tully and Stark intermingled. She held out one hand into the shadow of the doorway, and Arya emerged to take Cat's hand, followed by Ser Royce in his full bronze raiment. "Pardon me" Father asked "my Lady Stark, but is the boy truly supposed to be-?"

"I'm a girl!" Arya's exclamation silenced him thoroughly, and Cat looked to Father, meeting his gaze with a fierce look. Her brothers thought otherwise of it, like Jon, who smiled down at her. Inwardly Margaery sighed. It was a notion of Father being absentminded again wasn't it? Had he already forgot the antics on the pier the previous morning?

"She'll be quiet enough for your ears, won't she?" Robb reached out and tussled about in Arya's hair and gave her a look before Cat put her palm to the back of his hand, trying in to keep them from disrupting the arrangement of tresses on the Stark girl's head. "You'll sit with Mother, aye?"

"Aye" Arya inclined her head before she shot Father a scalding look and followed her mother to one of the three seats placed opposite the four Tyrell ones, lifting herself into Cat's lap at the woman's behest. From out of the corner, as Alla, leading the servants, began to set the table with wine and refreshments, Laena began to softly play the lute, plucking lightly as not the disturb their peace.

"Thank you" Robb said to Alla as she set a mug before him and poured it with wine from over his shoulder, following to do the same to Lady Cat, Jon and Arya in that turn. Royce and Umber took their places behind the Starks, standing in all their armour, a world of difference between them yet their purpose the same – to represent the strength of their lord and sire. Smalljon stopped Alla on her way and gave her a meaningful look, to which she fetched him a cup and poured to. Only once she had gone back to her place did Robb speak up again. "Let's get on with this, shall we?"

"Now" Grandmother began the proceedings before could get a word in edgewise, and that did set the tone for it all. All throughout the meeting he opened his mouth again and again as if to speak, only to be cut short by the others. Such was his whole rule, wasn't it? A shame of a thing, puppeted by others. Margaery loved her father, loved him dearly, but he was ill-suited for ruling, even ruling himself going by the girth his stomach had taken. "I suppose you have wants. Tell us, Stark - what do you need from us?"

"In short terms?" Robb wondered, shooting Margaery a smile and a wink, his good mood turning into a frown when she only offered a slight smile in return. "I need the swords of Highgarden and the Reach pointed at the Lannisters, not myself. I need the South secure and not turned against me while I end this war. I need grain and barley and wine to feed my people through the winter". He made a motion to incline his head at Grandmother, obviously understanding that she was the true power at the table. "And I want Margaery at my side, through the winter and all my years, at Winterfell. Everything else is less in my eyes. I can make Joffrey's due without".

"And you shan't require our soldiers to fight for you?" Grandmother asked back, a disbelieving smirk curling one corner of her mouth upwards as she looked at him under raised eyebrows thinned with age. "You will need no sons of the Reach to die beneath your banners or the walls of King's Landing?"

"No. If the Gods be good and the Ancestors keep their shields above us, not a one". Margaery frowned. If he wasn't in need of the soldiers, then why did he-? _Oh_. So that was what he intended. "I need your men at the roads and the waystations and the gates, your ships in their harbours. I need your siege engines breaking down their walls. If fortune favours us – which, granted, she rarely does in full – your soldiers will not have to kill a single man".

"They get to watch idly by from up close as we burn the skin the Lannister lion" Jon Stark scoffed from beside his brother. "I would envy them, if I wasn't to hold the knife myself".

"You" Father cleared his throat and spoke up, reaching for his cups to wet his mouth "you shan't do that truly, will you? You will not truly flay them, will you".

"No, we shan't, Lord Tyrell" Robb shook his head.

Arya shifted in her mother's lap. "Speak for yourself" Margaery heard her mutter.

Silence fell quite heavily after that, for a good long while, setting the tone for the rest of the negotiations in her mind, until Grandmother spoke up. "Setting that bit of unpleasantness aside, I am sure we can live by such an arrangement. The boys get to march up and down the roads and bash steel together and have something to write their silly songs about. And yet all but no one gets to grieve, and my most precious Grandchild is well cared for. That suits us perfectly, I would say. Wouldn't you say?"

"Yes indeed" Willas nodded while Father said an almost absentminded "Why, certainly". She was the only one left, and she looked to Robb and did her best to smile. "Aye".

"Aye" Robb repeated back at her with a smile before he laid his bare hands atop the table, fingers linked together. "You want something in return, then. Loras has sworn eternal vengeance on Stannis Baratheon on your behalf, so if you intend your reputation to remain unblemished- well, he's not your champion in this fight. And I've little inkling to let a murderous kinslayer sit the Iron Throne".

"Accursed is he and his line, until the end of time" Arya and Jon said as one, Cat trying to repeat along with them but missing the pace by just a hint.

"So, after we have vacated King's Landing by dragging the lot of the fat pricks in there out by their heels" he went on as if there had been no interruption at all "there's going to be an emptiness. Now, you might fill that emptiness with Tommen or Myrcella or any of the old boar's baseborn children, I could not care less. As long as your family guides the new king or queen on the Iron Throne and keeps peace with the North, the South is yours. All of it".

"Then you are the only man in the world who doesn't want to be king of all of it" Grandmother noted with some amusement. "How remarkably un-oafish. If terms are agreed upon we will work to make these matters more precisely inked. Until then" she shifted in her intentions, a tactic meant to keep her enemy unsettled and off their balance "we have to set a due time for the ceremony. Now, Margaery needs to be crowned, yes? And we would insist to be present at both moments. Important occasions deserve to be marked by kin and family. Given that, and the state of the Realm, we think it best that the wedding take place at the same time as the crowning, in Highgarden. We have Godswood there with Weirwood trees, for your leisure and your needs. The first full moon on the new year, perhaps?"

"That will be very hard to arrange, my Lady" Cat spoke up, making as if to rock back and forth like her daughter was a babe at the breast and not a child that had seen a little more than ten years. "The Lords of the North will want to attend. All of them. And I would have all my children attend my eldest's wedding".

"Send for them, then". For their concerns she was all but oblivious. "Rickon, your youngest, and Bran the crippled one, if I am not mistaken?" Arya glared at her and she could tell that both Robb and Jon ground their teeth at the epithet, but it was Cat who flinched. No one was looking at him, so no one noticed, but so did Willas. "Our people would know the family our greatest treasure leaves us for".

"We can't" Jon shook his head, speaking out of turn though no one seemed to care. "The North can't be left unattended like that. There must always be a Stark in Winterfell-"

"Alys Karstark can hold Winterfell" Robb dismissed his concerns with a wave. "We'll send for them. Not all will come, but all will send envoys and gifts at the very least".

"Are you sure that this is wise, Robb?" Jon asked, staring straight ahead over Margaery's shoulders at Garlan. "Gathering all our hearts and heads at one place. Screams of folly to me, so it does".

"If we are to be allies we need to trust each other" Robb said onto his brother, and inwardly Margaery could not help but make a face. She understood Robb's sentiment, though it seemed to her terribly naïve and somewhat childish. _Seven Hells, he needs my help. Accepting it all like a fool, eyes shut tight and arms opened wide_. "We'll send for them" he nodded curtly, firmly ending the talks regarding that particular subject. "Now, any other terms?"

"The dowry and brideprice can be negotiated on in greater detail once we've had this matter settled" Willas proposed, shifting his bad leg over in his chair by his hands before he settled back down. "Though, one matter disrupts us: the crown is indebted to our House. Almost eight hundred thousand gold dragons merely to us, the rest of the debt spread out over the coffers of the Faith, the Lannisters, Tyroshi merchant companies and the Iron Bank of Braavos. Also, the Lannisters themselves are indebted to us through their vassals, though we've yet to tally all of it to a number. That being given, we are reluctant to-"

"We'll repay the debt for you. We have well more gold than that loitering about, being utterly useless". Willas was surprised, and Robb shrugged. "It is surprising how much gold you can gather up when you march into a Westerlands city and break open all coffers".

"A bloody fee? Savagery or no, I am loath to look a gifted horse in the mouth" Willas submitted to the term with a bend of the head. "Now, then, some of your customs might seem peculiar to the people of Highgarden. We would never ask you to shed your identities or cast of millennia of tradition – merely that you reign in your men and your people while in our lands. The Reach, excepting the lands of House Crane, House Meadows and House Florent, is all but untouched by war. I think that we would all prefer that it remain thus".

"We will act in full chivalry" Robb told back at him, his good mood falling at the accusation. "I forbade reaving and pillaging in the Riverlands under the onus of punishment. If we march half our army and all our willing Lords to Highgarden before we head northwards towards King's Landing, we would do so in peace. Under a banner of truce. What customs worry you so?"

"I grow concerned" Garlan said aloud from behind them, and Margaery looked right on ahead as the Starks as one lifted their eyes and looked to her brother in turn. "It is not for naught that Northerners are considered savages in this part of the realm. I am not doubting your courage or your prowess in matters puissant, or your nobility of heart and blood. I am, however, questioning the notion of raising a woman to be a warrior". Arya's looked turned into a glare even as Robb's and Jon's faces turned dark. "Please, your Grace, my Lord. Is not the fairer sex weaker of limb by nature? Less suited to martial affairs and battle? The Mother and the Maid teaches us that the destructive nature of men must be tempered by the caring and tender nature of women. Creative and destructive in harmony-"

Something shifted in Robb's gaze, and they could all see it, even Garlan who promptly fell silent. "So all women are caring and tender, is it? You say that true, for all? Even for Cersei Lannister?" He didn't even raise his voice or change his tone. His voice was the same as always, but his eyes were like ice. Faintly, on the wind outside the windows, Margaery thought she could hear a growl.

"That's some fancy armour you've got there, Ser Garlan" Jon said aloud before Robb had a chance to go on. "All gold and precious metals and not a scratch on it". His gloved hand, in black just like the rest of him, trailed to his side to lay atop the white Wolfshead of his sword pommel, the garnet eyes of stone staring back at them, red as blood. "Is that because you've never been in a real battle, or because you're just that good?"

Garlan raised his gauntleted hand and cleared his voice. "I am quite confidant in my fighting skills, my Lord Stark" he said without a hint of pride to his voice. "I haven't been bested yet".

"Funny thing, that. Neither have I, and my armour's all scratched up". Margaery's heart began to beat faster as the sullen-faced man glowered, fear coming over her for her brother's sake. "I've met men like you before, Ser Garlan. Knights who sit their horse on high and think their valour makes them better than everyone else. Knights who refuses to know that a peasant's sword kills as easily as theirs. A woman's sword kills as easily as a man's, brave Ser knight. And swords held by those that are neither kill the easiest". _Neither?_ What on earth did that even mean? Something Other than man or woman?

"Jon, peace". She sensed the tension go out of the grim Stark and saw his hand settle back on the armrest of his chair at his brother's command. "With all due respect, Ser Garlan, my Lords, my Ladies – our laws and customs are different in the North. We all aware of that. But I believe that with a little effort we can find a middle ground that's respectful to both North and South".

"Eager to please, aren't you?" Grandmother scoffed, and Robb turned to her with a cocked eyebrow. "Yes, yes, I suppose you must be. Now, if we would let up with this foolish posturing we have more important matters to discuss". She snapped with her fingers, and Alla re-emerged from the shadows with a selection of parchment scrolls, and Margaery could not help but wince. Now for the moment she was dreading. "Now, onto the order of succession. We are given to understand that you have five siblings, your Grace?"

"Aye" Robb nodded, not sure of where their talks were heading. "I'm the oldest, then Jon, then Sansa and Arya, then Bran. Rickon's the youngest, and what about it?"

"As there hasn't been a King in the North for three hundred years, and before then succession law was splotchy beyond belief before then" Grandmother went on swiftly and fluidly, pressing the proverbial attack "we are in need of unifying the customs surrounding inheritance. I shan't have my favourite grandchild shipped off to the far freezing North unless these documents are adopted as regular custom". She reached out and handed the principal parchment over to Robb, who took it and rolled it out in a serious motion, reading aloud from it.

"'Agnatic primogeniture with male-preference accords succession to the throne by-' ya, ya, ya, 'a female member of a dynasty if she has no living brothers and no deceased brothers who has left surviving legitimate descendants-' ya, ya-" he paused and looked up, meeting Grandmother's gaze. "'Order of succession is determined by which order each member of the family is named proper, be it from a milk name or baseborn offspring of a dynast being-'" he rolled it back up and handed it on to Jon without as much as a look. "Let me see I understand correctly. You want me to place the members of my family in succession by order of which they were named Stark, with male preference".

"In short terms?" Grandmother, before his questioning gaze, showed no sympathy. "Yes".

"Which means that Jon gets punted down the line of succession to just beneath my dead uncle" Cat and Jon both flinched at his words, and Arya gave him a look of defiance, as if daring him to affirm that Benjen Stark was actually dead "and the one who stands to inherit my crown would be my crippled little brother?" Not quite right, that. Any children Margaery and Robb would have would come before and be uncontested. In theory, at least.

"In this affair, in this little alliance of ours" Grandmother began to retort in her best lecturing tone, the one she otherwise reserved only for teaching the young ladies of the House how to play the harp "do you except us to leave our kin to be placed last? After the legitimized bastard and the cripple? We need assurances, not your word, no matter how you much you intend to never break it. Who knows, your concert of lords might just _force_ you to cast off your betrothal again". Her tone left no doubt in the room about what she thought about such a notion being performed.

Robb glared, eyes flashing as Jon took in the contents the scroll before he handed it on to Catelyn in turn. "If this is the price of our alliance-" he began to rumble before he stopped and gave Margaery a look. A long look of sadness and apology, and she knew that if she hadn't felt numb all throughout her heart would have been breaking. "I cannot in good conscience-"

"We will not negotiate on this final matter" Willas voiced aloud, and Margaery's eyes shot to him. Of course he was part of it. He was always part of it. Always playing Grandmother's games for her, just like she herself. A whole group of pawns painted green and gold.

"Robb" Jon spoke up and laid a hand on his brother's shoulder. "It's fine. We need those soldiers, surely more than we need me. If that's the price-"

"I traded the lives of fifty men for you. I broke my mother's heart so that I could name you as my heir. And you want to make all that needless?" Robb shot back, but before the two came to blows – as they looked to do – Cat urged Arya off her lap and stood from her chair.

"If those were all of the terms of our accord, my Lord Tyrell?" Father, ill at ease and incapable of words, nodded, and so she inclined her head towards him. "We would need some time to deliberate in regards to this arrangement. We will retire and confer before making a decision, and send you our reply once we have reached an accord. Shall we?"

She smiled at Robb as they left the chamber in pack. He looked back at her for an instant, but he didn't smile back.

For several hours she hated her Grandmother. It was selfish, she knew that, but she couldn't help it. Grandmother was the political power of the House Tyrell. She had ruled the House by her will and manipulation ever since had married Leo Longthorn's grandson. And there were bound to be times that she made orders, for the good of the House and her family, which chafed against them.

But she did what she had to do, and she endured what she had to. For Grandmother.

For House Tyrell.

She had almost surrendered hope, sitting in Grandmother's solar for hours on end with her ladies and her brothers to attend her, when a man wearing Stark livery was showed into the chambers, and everyone turned towards him and ceased their songs and their playing, eager to learn what he had to say. Only, it wasn't a man.

"What is with you Northerners?" Grandmother asked without any introduction as the young woman, in full Winterfell armour and tabard, bowed like a man over the sword at her hip. Brienne, attending Margaery in silence despite having become sworn to lady Cat in all but name, gave that woman long looks as the Queen of Thorns went on. "Is life up there really so dull? No music or courtly games or turnery to entertain you, so every single one of you go South to murder people?"

"Food's scarce in the winter, m'Lady, and there're no sodding tourneys. T'was this or watching my kin starve". She was certainly martial, that slender woman, her hand laid casually over the pommel of her sword while the Stark cloak hung proudly on her back. "Also" she grinned past her freckles "I wanted to shove a sword up Tywin Lannister's arse. See if he really does shit gold".

As gasps and outcries at her casual profanity could be heard throughout the room Grandmother narrowed her eyes at the interloper. "Who are you, you crude girl?" She seemed intrigued.

"My da Hullen was master of horse at Winterfell, so he was. Served at our Lord Stark's band, Gods keep their souls, just like my brother Harwin does now. The name's Harra" she said, reaching out to offer her wrist for Grandmother to take like a warrior, being thoroughly ignored in doing so. "It's a common enough name, so it is. Ever met the servant taskmaster at Harrenhal, the one that-?" she saw the look she was given and stopped, mercifully enough. "Aye. Not important. None's the matter. His Grace the King in the North says he and his family has spoken about the betrothal". She paused and looked to Margaery, unintelligible in purpose and mood. "He says that he consents to all terms. The lot". And all the strength fled from Margaery's knees.

Even beside her, out the corner of her eye spotted as she sank down into her cushions while her ladies gathered about her in concern, Grandmother smiled triumphantly for a fraction of a moment, a flash hardly glimpsed, before she grew stern again and nodded back at the Northern woman. "Good. I knew the Stark boy would-"

"His Grace's nae boy, m'Lady" Harra said almost in warning, to which the Queen of Thorns shot her a glare no doubt meant to kill as the swordswoman turned towards Margaery. "M'Lady Margaery – the King in the North invites you to dine in his solar this even'. A private supper, to speak of things more closely. I'll be about to escort you, so I will".

And so she had hope again. She felt horrendously foolish, relying on a man so much for her emotional sanctity, but somehow she could not help it. Strength be damned, pride be damned – when she looked at him she felt like smiling.

So she hurried back to her own quarters not far from there and redressed after a hurried bath. One of the newer gowns, a Highgarden winter gown in green trimmed with grey and silver, fitting perfectly in the colouring but unfortunately fairly modest in the neckline. She had others in the making back in Highgarden, where the seamstresses and the dressmakers would readily create nearly anything she asked for, but for now this would have to do. Alla and Elinor accompanied her as she followed Harra towards the chambers Robb had been given for the duration of his stay. Harra, it turned out, was even more talkative than Lady Crane and cousin Desmera.

"Now, m'Lady" Harra said aloud as they approached Robb's chambers on the floor of the west wing set aside for the Starks and the Northeners, walking past guards in dull colours and warlike strides. "Since I've been doing such a good thing of escorting you, mayhap you'd put a good word in with his Grace. To join his honour guard, maybe? I'm quite the beast with a sword. I won't say I'm as good as Dacey Mormont or her Ladyship Arya-"

"Lady Arya is that good with the sword?" Margaery asked absently, frowning as they rounded a corner and saw the solar up ahead. In answer to her question Harra nodded eagerly.

"Aye, so she is! Once, on the ship down here, it was raining. Like the skies opened up and released the Hammer of Waters? And as the rust of us hurry and scramble the Lady Stark just walks out into the middle of the deck, never slipping like the slick wood's just like solid land. She drew her sword, and then she started to dance. I understand why they call it that now, water dancing. I've never seen the like for grace and skill. She didn't even as much as skim the water, and her blade was swift enough to cut the falling drops in twain". Harra paused and looked to Margaery's side at the sword hanging there. "You know how to use that thing?"

"No" she answered, looking squarely at those doors up ahead, furrowing her brow together as she stopped for a moment. "I don't. I want to, but no one's ever bothered to teach me".

"Well, you're lucky his Grace's agreed to your concord then" Harra shrugged, going ahead of Margaery to open the doors for her, greeting the two guards on either side of the door with familiar words. "Oi mate, what about you? Bored much, are youse?" She turned back to Margaery as the oaken planks swung open and gave her a grin. "A Northern queen may do as she wants. You want to learn how to use the sword? You'll have a thousand swordswomen, and swordsmen, at your side within the hour, willing to teach. Now, go along, will you?" she went on needlessly as Margaery strode on by her. "The King's waiting".

The King in the North had been given the largest solar and suite on the floor of the entire wing, the doors to the servant rooms, the bedchamber and the privy all as richly decorated with golden vines as the pillars that held up the ceiling of planks of polished birch. Most of the furniture had been taken away or pushed aside, leaving room for a single long table to dominate the middle of the solar floors in ordinary circumstances. These were not, though, for that table too had been carried aside, replaced by a small round thing and a pair of chairs that looked almost lonely at the centre. Robb's squire, a boy she thought she recognised from somewhere, was setting it along with few others, and as Margaery entered that westwards facing chamber and her ladies retreated into the shadows to escort her and see to it that her betrothed did not infringe on her honour, Rymund the Rhymer began to play from atop his perch in the far corner by the open windows unhatched even in the winter chill.

Robb watched the courtyard down below his windows in silence as the two servants set the table for their supper, the Young Wolf clad in a dark doublet and britches and white tunic shirt, his clothes changed since that morning. As she approached him she heard a distant clatter from down below, the clashing of wooden swords coming together, and behind him and a little to the side she looked down on the courtyard with him and saw shadowy shapes move across the cobblestone by the far side of it, coming together and breaking apart in charges and ripostes. "It's Jon" he supplied quietly as they stood there, having spend a good long while saying nothing. "He asked about your brother. Asked all. I think he's gotten a bloodied tooth for it. That he wants to challenge your middle brother in duel and win. He's been sparring with Dacey and Royce for hours".

"Garlan's never been bested" she offered, though she knew that if anyone could beat Garlan it one of the unknown fighters from the North, fighters whose manners and ways had never been observed in Southron tourney. "Robb" she said softly, reaching for his hand from behind. "This wasn't my invention. I did not learn of it until last night. I truly had no inkling that Grandmother would strive to usurp you like that-" her hand found his, and he didn't pull away. He held her merely.

"I know" he offered back turning about towards her, offering her a slight smile, his cheeks hollow and pale, his eyes red. "I could tell by your look. And though I was loath to accept it, Jon and Mother convinced me. In the end. It took a bloody lot of bickering".

"Cat wanted her own children to inherit first, I take it?" she asked, and he nodded, visibly still sore about the whole matter. "I think I can understand that. What about your brother? What made him advocate for his own displacement?"

"He has a strong sense of duty, and a lesser sense of self-worth". Robb made a face, his expression wry and reluctant. "Comes with being a bastard for most his life, I suppose. And I suppose it might be better this way, pushing him out of my shadow an inch or so. Free to be Lord of the Whispering Wood and my High Marshal as best as he may". He shook his concerns from himself and seemed to hang his head in defeat, and she took his other hand. Before she knew quite what she was doing she leaned into him, embracing the front of his body with hers.

"I missed you" she said into the fabric of his doublet, inhaling his scent, her very skin shivering with relief and delight. "Things were awfully boring without you".

"And the war was decidedly not boring, so it was" he muttered back and kissed the top of her head atop her hair. "I missed you too. Be gentle, will you? I took a quarrel through the shoulder at Silverhill". She looked up at him and frowned her displeasure. "A couple of my commanders made some fool choices. I had to charge my horse contingent in and save them". He raised one hand to her face and made as if to smooth out her frown with the pad of his thumb. "I thought I was buggered there, for a moment. And somehow all I could think about was my kingdom, and how it would fall apart without me. And how I haven't written you a single letter in all the weeks we were apart".

"They would have gotten lost, or the riders would have been taken by the Westermen" she let her frown gradually go away at his touch, fade into her relief once more. "I understand. I wrote you a few, but I didn't know where to send them. Maybe-" her words were cut short when he inclined his head and kissed her.

Their supper was a quiet thing, Rymund playing his harp in the corner for them, a mournful musical ode that made her heart ache even without any words – how come he no longer sang, even a little? – and the two of them spoke over their meal, sitting opposite each other across that small table. He confessed to her how good it was to not have to eat dried pork strips and stale bread and wash it all down with stolen Westerland wine for a change of pace, and she told him some jests at which he laughed. For long hours, after the lamb racks were eaten and their cups all but empty, they sat talking, about the war and their wedding. They had unwed siblings – perhaps their alliance could be secured better by further intermarriage? – and spies in their midst. Whispering into her ear he told her about Smalljon and Ebbert, how his web of informants had a full three strands. Cute, really. She knew Grandmother and Willas had hundreds.

But something was amiss. Something was tense behind his smile. She asked him about it. She also asked him why Ebbert had come onto his side so fully, abandoning her brother's service even after she had convinced her family to stop scheming against the Northerners out of a matter of contingent plans. Robb told her that they'd talk about it in the morning. That it was thing best discussed in the light of day, far from any darkness and Weirwood.

She wondered what that was, as she took her leave and returned to her chambers after Aunt Jenna's incessant prodding.

When she found out she wished she had never wondered.

"Margaery" he implored her softly as they by following morrow sat side by side on a marble bench in the recesses of the tiered gardens, the upper one, Lyra and Dacey standing at a far respectful distance. She hadn't thought that Brienne should hear any of the madness Robb had told her. "Please. Say something".

"Robb, it's a lot to take in" she told him slowly, her mind filled and crowded over with the notions he had placed in there. Sorcery, visions, Skinchanging, wargs and seers and Green men and people who could cast people to the ground in agony with but the sound of their voice- "How does that, that Bane Shriek matter work? It doesn't seem to make any sense to me". It was supernally odd, indeed.

"None of it makes any bloody shred of sense" he answered, his lips pressed together and drawn tight. "And when it starts to-" he shook his head, a look of disgust distorting his pleasant features. "That's when you should fall on your sodding sword. That's when it has you. Damn it all, Margaery, I understand if you want to call this whole thing off after learning that I am a warg and a-"

"Don't". She reached out and took the hand he was lifting to rub at his eyes, taking it softly in both of hers. He looked to her, and she did her best to smile. "You could be the grand wizard king of Yi Ti and it would still matter none to me. I care for you, Robb" she placed his hand to her cheek and kissed the tip of his forefinger. "More than I ever could for Renly". _Or any other love I've ever had, you selfless fool of a sorcerer. I love you. I love that you are noble of heart. That you hold no secrets from me_. "It matters none to me that you can do magic". She wasn't superstitious, after all. And she liked to think that she had an open mind, even if all this scared her.

"I don't think anyone does magic – I think we simply are it, like it's a part of us". And now he went and stopped making sense again. But slowly he began to smile once more. "If it's any consolation, I'm not very good at it. Warging, I mean. There's a lot of Tully in me, and that apparently extends to the blood". Relief was paramount in him then, as he leaned forwards to kiss her, and she met his lips without hesitation. That kiss was a sweet thing, one of acceptance and understanding and easing of tension out of him. When they came apart she shifted on the bench and made about a little, leaning back to support her head against his shoulder as his arms went around her. Warm, strong arms. Sorcery or not he made her feel safe.

"I shan't lie to you, Robb – this will take some time familiarising myself with" she said, turning her face against the fabric of his doublet. "In some parts of the land Wargs are burned at the stake at mere superstition. That you let them roam freely about in your army" she couldn't help but hold back a slight shudder. "It frightens me. Such power – most aren't as noble as you. They'll surely abuse it". The sorcery of the stories and the legends were certainly not the sorcery of reality, but if one mere fraction of the powers of legend were true then it was fierce power indeed.

"You have such faith in me, love – more than I have in myself for certain". She heard him sigh and close his arms about her waist, and she laid her hands above his, feeling the skin of his knuckles idly. "All this, it's just bloody grand, isn't it? In all honesty, Margaery, I miss the days when the oddest thing that could happen was that I could smell what Grey Wind sniffed. Like how it was back at Winterfell and Father was alive and only us Stark children were wargs. Now there's magic all about, and it feels like every time I turn around there's sorcery at my back. That every fuckwit with a falchion is some kind of-" he drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, drawn out, somehow regretful. "I don't like this, Margaery. I don't. The world's not supposed to be like this".

"Don't fret, Robb" she patted his hand, mind drifting off into other thoughts as the autumnal birds sang in the gardens around them. "Have you ever heard the Mermaid's Lament?" she asked, and she knew that he wondered what she was talking about. "It's one of my favoured ones. I know it's sad, but" she smiled at the memories that came with hearing it in her mind "I've always thought it was beautiful. Poignant. ' _Drown your fears in me, my dear – as you drown, my dear, in me'_ ".

"You'll have to sing it to me sometime". She felt the vibrations in his breast with his every word as much as she felt his breath upon her hair, inhaling her scent like a Direwolf in early springtime – lean, and hungry. She sat up straight and turned her smile onto him, reaching up to tuck an errant strand of his red hair back behind his ear and out of the way. "Margaery-"

"We will shoulder through this, Robb. Together". The moment drew on and would have resulted in more idle kissing, if not more than merely that, had not Grey Wind come bounding out of the bushes like a massively overgrown puppy, happily panting as he chased a clutch of late-hatching butterflies. She laughed at the great beast that acted so joyously and stood from the bench with Robb.

As she called on the Direwolf and headed out of the garden Robb walked alongside her, his hand gasping hers and their fingers intertwining. Quietly, he repeated.

"Together".

* * *

END

* * *

 **A/N:** This chapter took a little longer than it should have. Sorry about that.

Anyway, there are a few things to note.

Smalljon booming out titles and kicking down doors was a recurring thing already, so I decided to take it a little further for a spot of levity. In his titles for Jon he mentions the word _Yr_ , which is as far as I can tell a Scottish title referring to the successors of clans. It seemed appropriate. Also, in his title for Arya he brings up the names of women born within the Stark family only, which were quite difficult to pin-point from the rest. The first one, Sansa, was added for some variety.

I like to think that _that_ Sansa was the wife of Torrhen or Brandon the Builder or something. It seems to be a traditional name in the Stark family in the canon lore.

Olenna's work behind the scenes made sense for me, as she'd want her granddaughter's children to hold undisputed right in the ranks of House Stark. Also, she schemes by nature. I wanted to transmit a notion of the power that she holds through this. More importantly – this chapter needed conflict.

Lastly: House Umber's words – they made sense to me. The breaking of chains and the bonds of loyalty are recurring themes for the house members. As for House words, their meaning isn't supposed to be single-faceted or simple to explain. Easy to personalise.

The next chapter will see some scenes from the war, the appearance of some characters that have POVs in canon, and the thickening of the intrigue. After it and the one after that we finally get to the wedding arc.

I hope that you enjoy those chapters, just like how you enjoyed this one. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	16. Turning Tides

Chapter Sixteen – Turning Tides

* * *

 ** _The Crowned Kraken_**

"Out!" Fools and traitors and weak-minded snivelling vermin all.

"Out! Good for nothing fools, all of you! Out!" He flung his wine cup after the useless Goodbrother buffoon, the one bringing up the rear of his supposed council of war as they left out through the double doors. The cup smashed into shards against the vault above the doors of his chambers, spilling red like blood all over the stone. "Useless, all of you".

He turned towards the fire, staring into the flames like one of those damned red-headed whores from Volantis, those who worshiped their burning god R'hllor. All over Essos they prayed to the flames, ruins and magics built on stolen Valyrian slivers of empires long burned down. Shadows of greatness that had once spread its shadow all over the world, soaring in the heavens. Was that why they worshiped fire? Fire, fire that was nothing but cinders and embers and striking driftwood set ablaze? Fire that guttered out so quickly? Snuffed embers, drowned on the rising tides.

Or had it ever been alive? Before he had never doubted, not for an instant, never. But now he had lost. Lost the wars, lost his sons, lost his brother. For the second time. Now he doubted. Had the histories been lies, all? Had they ever been anything more to them than this? Had the fire of his people ever burned bright enough to cast any shadows over the world?

"Fool" he spat at himself, weak and witless and doubting. No doubt. Never doubt. He was Ironborn. His blood was salt and stone and iron. "What is dead may never die".

"What is dead may never die. It rises again, harder and stronger". And there she was. The only one left to him. "You shouldn't shout at the captains like that. Doesn't breed much for loyalty". In she walked, stepping over the pool of wine, her chainmail hauberk about her and her dirk and axe at her hips. "Father".

"Asha". Asha Greyjoy, his sole remaining child and heir. And more of a son to him than Theon had ever been. She certainly was enough of a man to outstrip Theon easily. "Are you here to bring me news of failure as well? Of defeat?" Bitter all of it, a thousand times worse than brine and rotten algae. "Did you fail at Stony Shore?"

"Did I fail at Stony Shore? Did I fail at running away, you mean?" In other times he would never have let her speak to him like that, would have struck her down and taught her humility and her place, but now he wouldn't. She was armoured and armed and the sole good captain he had left amongst his people, the sole remaining one who knew what she was doing when standing at the helm, and he was much too drunk. Where was his cup? Where had he- damn it all. "I did not" Asha went on as she walked on towards him. "I burned and reaved and made sure those few still living on those scorched green lands will never forget us. Or our sails".

"Burn their fields and poison their wells. If we are to run away from our conquests, then we'll make sure that they remember us". A retreat, they called it. A stratagem merely, something to allow them to fall back and regroup their fleet and gather their forces for the next attack. But he was fooling no one. He could spit and foam and hiss all he wanted, but he wasn't a fool or a madman. No matter what they said, on the decks and in the halls. They thought he didn't know, but oh he did, he knew all of it. They called him crazed and rabid, but he was neither. He was of his full mind, oh he was, and they would know it soon enough. He was Ironborn. He'd kill them all in time. A man was only as strong as his reputation. No one would give him anything that he could not take, and no one would besmirch his name. He would show them. He'd show them all.

All the world would fear the name Balon Greyjoy. Before he'd let them bring them down and strip the driftwood crown off his head he'd show them all.

"You are late" he told her as she moved towards the fireplace, the ancient stone fundaments of Pyke showing through and past the mortar. There was nothing he did not care for as much as these ancient rocks. Pyke was the Iron Islands. It was the Ironborn. Firm as the walls and towers of Pyke they had withstood the shock and power of all the world, of the Storms and the Rivers and the North and Dragons and the Iron Throne. Only by casting the towers back in to the sea from which they had been hewed they had bested them. Only might of kingdoms and empires a hundred times wealthier and larger than the Iron Islands had been able to bring them to their knees. And those who knelt could rise again.

 _What is dead may never die._

"A squabble between a few of my crewmen over a farmstead thrall" she noted absently, looking up at the great tapestry hanging above the fireplace and the kraken carved there in the stone. "They got to violence, blades were drawn. I had them strapped to the mast and lashed until they relearned to behave. Took a little while".

It was a large thing, gilded along the edges, ancient and great and fading in the colours despite the great care they had showed it through the ages, depicting a scene that had never happened. A fantasy, merely, but he had them bring it out and up from the storages of old Castle Hoare after they had killed three of his sons. Rodrik, Maron and Theon had all died that day, even though the last one came back as a shadow of a simpering tyke. The tapestry show the waters that had risen along with the Drowned God and the Ironborn, the walls of Winterfell drowning as the krakens assaulted the towers along with the hundreds of longships. Long tentacles grasped at the stone, ripping those towers down and breaking the ruins into dust. The fires burned in their precious godswood, their gods doing nothing to save them.

What gods? Nothing but wind and ghosts and idle nature and dying leaves. Illusions and nothingness, all of them. Only the Drowned God ruled in the waters, like how the Storm God ruled in the clouds. They were nothing before him and the Drowned God.

 _What is dead may never die_.

"You should have been there". And she should have known her place. At his side, as his first warrior and captain. In the old days that would have been Victarion, but the black bastard of the Starks had cut off his head and sent it back to his ships at harbour at the edge of Cape Kraken. Rotten and half-decomposed, the bone showing in places, the head had been shown to by Victarion's only by the battered remnants of his helmet that where still around it. "Might have shown the fool boys a thing or two. They pushed for peace. Pah! Clemency! I'd be a sea-cow before I let this peace be made-"

"Do you think the sea could ever come to Winterfell, father?" she wondered, still looking up at that damned tapestry, watching the faces of the Starks scream as they were dragged down under. "Surely the waters are too far away. Too far from shore, watered by rocky streams and hot pools. Would the sea ever come to Winterfell as anything but a flash of a flood – there one instant and gone the next?"

"Of course, fool girl" he spat her way and looked around for his cup. Not the clay one – no, the other one, the new one. His Victarion one. He looked over the chambers, his chambers hung with the trophies of the raids of his youth, weapons and horns and banners and riches, all paid for with the Iron Price. That carafe, that one there, he had taken it along with a she-thrall off a Ghiscari trader when he had seen less than sixteen years. Oh, how sweet her screams seemed to him now. The wine too, the wine within – nothing better than to drink the wine of the conquered out of the Victarion cup. He drank deeply before he looked over to the fool girl by the fire, the only true son he had ever had. "All will drown when He Who Dwells Beneath rises. What is dead may never-!"

His words were cut short by a cough, some of the damned accursed bitter wine lodged itself in his throat. Was it- yes, it was Victarion, Victarion's fault. He always was a dull one, bitter and savage. It was his fault. His fault the wine was soured. His fault for dying and leaving the war in ruins.

"Water rises along the shore and the rivers. Winterfell's long inland". There she went again, with her mad muttering. She was going insane, wasn't she? They all were mad with cowardice. But not him. No, not him, not Balon Greyjoy, the Ninth of His Name Since the Grey King, King of Salt and Rock, Son of the Sea Wind and Lord Reaper of Pyke. He was the only who wasn't insane.

"We'll gather the ships" he told her, pointing to her with Victarion in his other hand. "Regather the fleet! Fly the Kraken, we will reave inland again! Remartial our men and strike at their hearts! The Glover and Tallhart and Bolton Northerners that cast us out left their castles untended! We'll take them all and burn them to the ground! Salt and Iron, we'll have it all!" Victarion sloshed wine over his hand as he showed her, try to show her, tried to make her see the scope of his vision. "Curse you, brother! Can't hold wine, can't swim, can't even kill the Black Bastard of-!"

"Father" Asha said aloud, finally letting up at the foolishness before the tapestry, turning to her with concern in her eyes, concern and dread. There was need for her to fear the Kraken. She was Kraken too, unlike the screaming Starks and the cowards. A mad Kraken, yes, but still a Kraken. "What did you do? That skull in your hand-"

"Victarion was my cup-bearer, fool girl" he told her and drank deep of that sweet wine that Victarion had made bitter. "It serves him justly. If he couldn't succeed in life he could serve well me in death". He held out Victarion towards her, showed her the uncle that had been so useless. "After they scooped all the grey and green and pink bits out they set his eyes with gold and lignite. So he wouldn't spill. But he keeps on spilling. Keeps on failing! Useless!"

"You made a drinking vessel out of your own brother's head?!" And now she was loud. Screaming like a woman. But no, she wasn't a woman. She was his son, his best son. Why was she a woman? And why did cowards pour into his chamber, Harlaw and Blacktyde and Botley and even some Greyjoy ones, coming to her back? Cowards merely. Cowards were deaf, they could not hear. They were too occupied with running to be able to hear anything. "The defeats, Victarion's and Theon's deaths – they've driven you mad! You're mad!"

"I am the only sane one. I am the only one sane of mind left. Here, take him" he said as he tossed Victarion to her, spilling wine like blood all over the front of her hauberk, before he turned towards his washing basin in the far corner, walking towards it. He had to get the red off his hands. Cursed Victarion and his cursed clumsiness. "We'll show them all, Asha. We gather the fleet, and first we take Bear Island, the Stoney Shore, Deepwood Motte. Then we make our grandest fire yet". As he put his hands in the water of the basin it darkened ever so little, from crystally clear to seeming more like the brine of the Drowned Men. "We set the ships for South, then North. We round Dorne and then up, past Tarth and King's Landing. We take White Harbour and sail up the Knife as far as Castle Cerwyn. And then Winterfell. I'll murder and rape and reave like-"

"Tristifer. Quarl. Seize him". Suddenly his hands were lifted from the sea and forced out, held in place by strong men with strong arms, and a strong hand, Asha's hand, grasped at his hair as he struggled. "You'd kill us all. You'd make us a flash flood, father, a storm. Raging and roaring and gone in an instant. We are the sea, and we rise slowly. We encroach. We eat away at them and swallow their shores one by one. We are not a storm. We are the sea".

"What is this?!" He heard his voice breaking, but it was of little matter. His hands were sticky with Victarion's blood, and he had to wash it off. Wash it off. "Wash it off, now!" It was all his fault.

"Is this your king?" She wasn't asking him, was she? No, she was speaking to the cowards.

"Fool girl, you're not my son. Cowards can't hear you" he told her, tried to make her see the folly of what she was trying to do. "They don't have ears! They dropped them when they ran away!"

"Is this your king?!" she asked them again, fool as she was. "Is this your king?! This shrieking, dull, rabid creature?! Lacking in wit and humanity?! You know what I am about to do!" What she was about to do? Talk, to cowards, as if they could hear her? She was the mad one. It was too funny. He couldn't help but laughing. "You know what I am about to be! Any of you take any fucking issue with this, step forth now! Or be forever named accomplishes in the task!" They did nothing, they answered nothing. Of course they didn't. They couldn't hear her. "I loved you once, father".

"You think to kill me, boy?!" he laughed at her, laughed at what she was trying to do. "Kill me?! I am the Son of the Sea Wind! Without me He'll come for you! Without me the Iron Islands will die!"

"What is dead may never die". She whispered that on her breath into his ear as her hands grasped his hair and angled his head by force. The water in his washing bowl seemed like the waves of the sea. He remembered the sea, the wind in his face, the screams in his ears. Like a scream her words rang through in his ears as the memories made him limp. "It rises again, harder and stronger".

And then she pushed his face under the water and drowned him.

* * *

 ** _The Mother Lion_**

She sighed as she washed her face in the washing basin in the back of the Small Council chambers. She had faith in Joffrey. She kept faith in Joffrey. But sometimes were harder than others.

"Well" her vile imp of a brother said before he drank deeply from his cup, eyeing the stain of wine still marring the table despite the servant girl's attempts at wiping it up "that was certainly bracing". Vile creature, low and malformed, he had been the one to drive her son to such fierce anger. It was only in his nature, wasn't it? Joffrey would roar, for he was a lion despite his name. A lion, proud and strong. How could an imp possibly understand? "He was always bad, but now it's simply getting out of hand". He looked up and gave Lord Father a glance at the head of the table. "No pun intended".

"I know very well what you intended". Lord Father had grown snappish and brusque, more so than even before, ever since the Blackwater. One of Stannis Baratheon's marksmen had struck him with a quarrel to the thigh, and though he had shouldered through the pain and fought all the battle with the projectile still lodged there he been forced to do his ceremony of office riding, as he hadn't been able to stand. Even now he walked with difficulty, forcing himself along by the cane leant against the armrest of his chair, and his face was streaked with anger and agony when he thought that none could see. Perhaps that was why he was short of words of late. Perhaps that was why he had let her be on the council as an advisor even though he had sworn to dismiss her from it.

Perhaps he feared for the future of his works and his family. Perhaps he wanted her, at last, to be his successor and his heir. _And perhaps the skies over King's Landing will be filled with swarms of flying pigs. Do not fool yourself, Cersei. Lord Father is as strong as ever_.

"I intended nothing, Father, I assure you – but incidentally there is truth to my jest". That smug, devious creature – he had made Father rile Joffrey up. She knew he had. "All the rest of you'd agree, would you not?" Uncle Kevan, serving as Master of Laws, made a face where he sat next the Spider eunuch, looking across the table to the empty seat of the Grand Maester beside Aurane Waters. Aurane was a good choice for the position in her mind, even though Lord Father had his doubts. But by his inclusion they had earned the loyalty of the Driftmark fleet and all the ships of the Blackwater. "Then again, none of you would ever dare to speak against Tywin Lannister, Hand of the King".

"My Lord Hand, if I might offer a word of caution". Varys that, his voice silky and slick, entirely sexless just like the eunuch itself. Revolting creature. "Too much Milk of the Poppy can have ill repercussions on the body. Constant tiredness, spasms of the muscles and the limbs, sleeplessness – I fear that if we shall keep treating his moods with the Milk, he might be rendered" he paused, a mummers trick of theatre she found incredibly vexing "incapable of ruling".

"I know, Lord Varys – which is why we rule for him. The King is young, and impatient with youth. That someone told him that Clegane was captured by the Starks was unfortunate but inevitable". A thousand times more unfortunate for her stole. She had favoured that garment, and now it was ruined with wine. Thankfully none of it had gotten in her hair or on her dress. "But his name day is in a scant few weeks. The gifts shall be enough to mull him over and curb his fangs. Especially the ones by myself given".

"And might we ask what those gifts might be, oh Mighty Father?" Tyrion asked as she went to retake her place at Father's left hand, opposite Uncle Kevan.

"Your glibness does you no credit, Tyrion". She would have smirked at the creature that had lured the world to think him her brother had she not been angry still about the ruination of her best stole. "Fetch them". Father looked to one of the three of his manservants standing by the door to his private quarters, and the man hurried out, returning with a large box and another servant carrying the same a few scant moments later. "These will no doubt improve his mood. We shan't have to sedate him for a full four days or so by my reckoning".

"Is that-" Aurane Waters spoke up, rising from his chair aghast and agape as the boxes were placed on the council table and opened. "Is that Valyrian steel? Valyrian steel swords?"

They were, truly both of them were _. Jaime, you should be here to see them_. How her brother, her lover, her other half, would have marvelled. "From whence did you get them, Father?"

"Regardless of the whence, the getting must have cost a fortune". Her impish brother, in his greed, did take his duties as Master of Coin seriously. "They don't match the descriptions of any existing Valyrian blades. According to the chronicles I've read about them, that is Are they freshly forged?"

"They are". Though one was longer than the other by three inches and wider by half an inch, and though their hilts and scabbards were greatly different in everything but their colouring of gold and red, the blades were alike. The steel was grey as smoke, darkening to black in places, and red ripples ran through the steel, the colours of blood and night.

Aurane's eyes, so like Rhaegar's but not an inch of his nature's, were wide open in what she took to be jealousy. "No one's made a Valyrian steel sword since the Doom of Valyria!"

"There are three living smiths who know how to rework Valyrian steel. As to my knowledge. One of them, master armourer Tobho Mott, has a shop here in King's Landing. The largest building on the Street of Steel is his shop". Father paused and lifted one, the larger one, eyeing it with a hardly noticeable scowl. "Though he might not be as good as they claimed. He couldn't get the colouring right and said some nonsense about the steel resisting change".

Varys, as always, interjected where he didn't belong, where he wasn't needed. "Where did you get enough steel for two swords, my Lord Tywin?"

"The weapon was absurdly large. And the one to whom it belonged had no longer any need of it". That meant- she smiled. Oh, it was just too precious. From the ruin of the Starks they had gained their power, and from the ruin of Ice they had forged two new swords for their family.

"Father, was this wise?" Tyrion's voice grated harshly on her ears, and she wished she had her wine, but Joffrey had knocked over her goblet when he had thrown his own during his earlier tantrum. "You all do realise that this has killed any hope we had left of treating peace with the Starks? Did you smash Eddard's skeleton to powder while you were at it?"

"Treating with the Starks, pah" Father scoffed and lifted his gaze to give her a harsh look. "Your sister killed any hope of treating with the Starks the moment she let Arya Stark escape her". Ah. It ranked on her, that, but it wasn't her doing. It was her men who had been to slow and dumb and clumsy. Meryn Trant, if she recalled right. Yes, it was Ser Trant's fault. All of it. "It showed us liars. It weakened our standing. And now that Sansa Stark has slipped your bonds-"

"What about the burning of the Westerlands?" Tyrion pressed, and she wondered why Father hadn't strangled the foul thing in the crib after it had ended Mother's life. "I've had the words. I've heard them shouted in the streets. The Stark boy plunders, rapes and pillages as he damn well pleases". He narrowed his discoloured eyes at Father over the swords in what should have been their moment of pride. "Does it move you nothing that your own people suffer?"

"We've bought time enough to regroup and resupply with the burning of the Westerlands. What they've gained there will bog them down, and our agents in Highgarden will snuff their alliance with the Tyrells before it is even made whole". Father, of course, knew better than to engage the fool. He knew wars and battles better than anyone man alive, better by much than the boy Stark. "Before long we will have the Stormland troops ready to march, and with them on our side we will outnumber the boy Stark's army easily".

Uncle Kevan, always good and loyal to Father, cleared his voice and spoke up. "With the Tyrrel alliance broken we will cast their armies out of the realm, send them to their fey Gods when we hang them all as traitors".

"And what of Ser Gregor? Your champion, the Mountain that Rides?" Again, Tyrion, always with the questions, never knowing the patience of listening. And who cared at all for Gregor Clegane? Jaime was locked in with him. "Taking him hostage was a great offense. A blow to the family respect you value oh so highly".

"What about Jaime?" she asked Father, and he gave her a look of steel. But she had steel in her too. She had given birth to a king. She was a queen. "What about your son?"

"Neither of you know, but things have changed in the world". By the way he said it was something she knew, in her heart, would not end well for anyone, but they would no doubt have the best of it. "Dark things have awoken. It allows the Starks to win because they wield the darkness like a weapon" he went on, tapping the surface of the table with his forefinger in a rhythm she thought she could almost recognise. "We have weapons too. I have sent a man to free them".

He said nothing further on the matter. Apparently, that was not good enough for Tyrion. "And that is all you will tell us?"

"That is all you need to know. Any of you" he shifted his gaze from Tyrion to Uncle Kevan to Aurane to Varys to her to Pycelle's empty seat, the Grand Maester seeing to the comfort of his king. "Now, unless there were some other matter?" None spoke, and so he made a gesture, dismissing them all with a wave. "The council is adjourned. Ready kingly gifts for my grandson's nameday, to match or outmatch mine. You will be summoned when I have need of you".

Later, in her own solar in the Red Keep, decorated and furnished as befitted a queen, with food on hand, she thought on that meeting and Lord Tywin's ominous words. Dark things? Awoken? Surely it was foolishness, all of it. Perhaps he had hired the Faceless Men to get them back to her. She cared not. As long as she had Jaime back to her side, whole and safe.

"Vile creature" one of the Marbrand girls that served as one of her ladies-in-waiting whispered to the others around her, speaking of Tyrion as they paraded in turn her stoles before her, helping her chose what she was to wear to the supper that evening. "A horrible little thing"

"Every inch the scampering demon, especially after the Blackwater" Jocelyn Swift supplied in accord with the rest, dim-witted as the wench was she could nothing more than agree to anything.

"Methinks he wasn't wounded". That was the Estermont girl with eyes like a turtle, fittingly enough, speaking that strange Greenstone accent born of the island's relative isolation. "Me thinks t'was merely his impish nature, brought to the fore by the slaughter he there caused".

"I've heard he killed two hundred men on his ownsome in the battle" said the Brax girl last, the youngest of the lot, wide of eye and easily fooled by even the wildest of stories and most fanciful of notions "and ate them!"

She held up her hand and urged their silence all, and as a hush fell over them – at least they knew their place – Tyrek approached from aside, a pitcher of wine in his hand, ready to supply her new gilded goblet studded with rubies, one she kept in her own chambers most of the time. "More wine, my Queen?" She dismissed him with a wave, and he took that as an invitation as to leave. She almost wanted to smirk at it all.

"Hold a while, Tyrek" she said aloud as the maids showed her once stole after the other, and the young man paused in the doorway, looking back at her, his face a perfect mask of civility and servitude. Only his eyes betrayed him. Only his eyes showed a hint of fear. "That one" she chose one stole out of the rest – a golden thing with red trimmings of lace, opulent and imperial in manner – before she dismissed the servants, leaving her alone with Tyrek. "I have heard things. Things from men I trust. Men who claim that you are in league with a spider".

"My Queen-" he stuttered out as if it was a notion she had made up, dreamt up, wished into being. It wasn't. He, unlike what one of her people had reported, had been at the very thick of it at the riots after sweet, precious Myrcella had been shipped off to Dorne, sold for an alliance like a horse or a bag of beets. "I-" Tyrek swallowed hard, fear making him shudder. "I would never betray you-"

"Spare me the fictions, Cousin Tyrek. For being a spy you are a poor liar". He blinked up at her before he fell to his knees before her, shivering like a boy of three before a warhorse. "Your reasons for being Varys's agent do not interest me". She reached out and put her hand to his chin, angling his face up towards hers. "Only that you are".

"My Queen" he stammered out, powerless before her "I beg your most merciful clemency-"

"Enough. How you came out unharmed in the riots I do not know. Some eunuch trick, no doubt. He didn't geld you, did he?" Shuddering, trembling, he shook his head. "Good. It would be a waste of good Lannister stock, that". They were lions in a world of stags and wolves and sheep. They were kings amongst men. Blood best not diluted. "I must tell my Lord Father of this"

He shook his head hurriedly as if on reflex. "Please, have mercy! My queen, I beg of you-!"

"Do not beg!" It was revolting, seeming him crawl on the floor like a maggot. "We are lions! Begging is for lambs! We roar, and they cower!" No, she had to compose herself. This would not do. "I shan't tell Father – but you must do something for me. Go to Varys, as you did before. Do what he asks of you, as you did before. But now" she settled back into her chair, tapping the rim of her empty goblet "now you will tell me everything first". It never hurt to have agents in the enemy camp, after all.

"Y-your wish is my command, my Queen" he stammered out at last. "When have you need of me?" Tyrek stood and bowed before her, ever the faithful and perfect squire. He was quite a lot like Jaime, wasn't he? In appearance, anyway. Much like Lancel, before Lancel had died by the Blackwater by a Florent spear through his back. He did look a lot like Jaime had, when he and she were young. And he was married to a babe suckling still at the breast, was he not? Surely a boy his age has desires. Just like she did. She missed Jaime something fierce. It was as if she was only ever truly alive when her brother was inside of her.

But that would wait. As a reward, perhaps. "For now?" With a smile that made him blush and avert his eyes she extended her cup towards him. "Only more wine".

* * *

 ** _The Young Giant_**

"Should you really be drinking? Now, of all times?" Ebbert's voice grated more than usual. _How about that_. It seemed that working with the man made him even more vexing.

"Don't be such a worrywart, mate. One should always drink when dealing with matters of the head" Jon, called Smalljon by most, poured himself another mug by the wooden tap in the small barrel on the edge of the table and lifted it to his nose to smell once the pouring was done. "Ah, bloody good, this. Prime dry stout, as they made it back when the family lands were called Kingdom of the Shadow. Have a gander at this, will you?" he extended the cup towards Ebbert, who wrinkled his nose as he looked down into it. _Wrinkling his nose, at stout? Bloody heathen_. "Perfect, so it is. As black as Joffrey Lannister's heart, and as dry as his mother's cunt".

"Colourful epithets" Ebbert noted as the two of them turned back to the parchments rolled out on the table before them in Smalljon's own tent, erected a good distance from the walls of Red Lake castle and out of reach from the defensive measures the Reachmen could employ to try and ward off their assault. "You have a mind for them. I've noticed".

"You and everyone else, Maester. My great-uncles keep telling me I'm just too bloody clever". He took long draught from his cup and sighed with joy as the flavour came to him like a dream of Last Hearth. "We should probably get this sodding thing understood, sooner rather than later. Personally I don't see why we should bother laying siege to this sodding castle".

"I'm no Maester". Ebbert said first, shrugging it off even though it bothered him something fierce, plain as day. "It's because only half of House Crane has remained loyal to Lord Paramount Mace" Ebbert said, as if he didn't already know all of that. Long since told, actually. "The rest of the House, under Ser Parmen and Ser Rycherd, joined Stannis Baratheon after Renly's death. Parmen's a fierce warrior, even. He was the Purple of Renly's Rainbow Guard-"

Jon couldn't hold back laugh. "What part of him was purple, to earn him that name?" he said through his chuckles. "Parmen the Purple! Hah! No, I ken that. I ken also why. While the Tyrells set the courses for the wedding we put our swords to use, riding around the Reach to strike rebellious banners. I ken. His Grace wants to ingratiate himself to our new allies, and give his goodfather the Lord Pompous Ser Crane's head for a wedding gift. I don't question the King's orders. What I don't ken is: why us? Why do we have to stay here, in the camp, while his Grace and the rest of the guard are out riding and slaughtering? Why we, the spymasters?"

 _Why are we slavering to the whims of some fat Southron fuck?_

"There need be no taking of heads" the sandy haired little man replied as he ran his fingers down the diagrams on the pages before them on the table. "And it's because I used to be a Maester. One that studied warfare". He put his thumb through one of the links in the chain around his neck, one that was often hidden at his collar unlike the rest, and pulled it into the fore. "Iron's for warcraft. However, it appears that my training in the matter of siege engines was less than adequate". He pulled his thumb out of the chain and ran his tired hand down his face. "Gods, I can't make heads or tails of this".

"Well, let's see here then" he leant past the Maester and looked over the drawing provided to them by Willas Tyrell, the cripple. Back in the Umber lands a man maimed like that would have been left to the wolves long since. "Well, these wheels as the bottom – those're men running in them? – they pull on this rope winch here then? And that winch pulls on the arm, lowering it to lock in the position here despite the counterweight. Once the arm is locked down the stone's placed here, then? And then, by this lever" he tapped the diagrams in one place before pointing to the pictograph in the corner, showing the trebuchet firing. "It rains death down on our enemies' heads. Bloody magnificent". He looked up at Ebbert, who was staring back at him. "What? Is there something in my beard?"

"You're shrewd" Ebbert said, as if it was a surprise. "Oddly shrewd. You never seem that way".

He looked back, raising his eyebrows before he drank deeply of his clay mug. "Those are fighting words, mate" he said at last before he put his hand atop Ebbert's head and turned his head forwards towards the diagrams again. "Now, you've got to figure out how it all fits together. How the cogs work and the what-nots. I can't do bloody everything around here myself".

"This is why you are here, Umber" Ebbert said aloud as he touched the edges of the parchments and drew out another one from the pile, the one displaying the schematics for a rope-suspended battering ram. "Now, this is just insulting. They don't think we know how to build wall breakers. Umber" he said before a long pause. "My father used to say that you lot have a certain low cunning – whatever that is supposed to mean".

"Sounds like it's taken right out of Leechlord Roose's mouth" Jon shrugged back. He had heard much worse over his years, though most who had uttered such had never lived long enough to spread those words on to others. "No matter. You Whitehill lot out of Highpoint have had a good relationship with the Boltons over the years. Kinship at times, if I'm not mistaken".

"I'm not a Whitehill" the little man shot back defiantly, riling against those words just like little Hrimfrost, Jon's youngest brother. Though he might have another one soon, if Mother bore the child to term. If it was a boy in her belly. Which it might well not be. He'd like another sister. "I was born a Whitehill, to Ludd Whitehill. But I forswore that name when I first arrived at the Citadel. The name, and the family".

"You're not a Whitehill, and you're not a Maester. So what are you?" he drank again and found his mug all but empty. "More drink! You want one-" he paused and looked long at the man "oh royal scholar?" he made a face in disgust. "No, that was terrible. Royal Scholar's not right".

"Thank you, Umber – but I'd rather not" Ebbert sighed aloud and ran his hand down his face once again. "It's late, long past midnight, it's bitterly cold and I am sick at heart. I'll take my leave to sleep. And hopefully not dream too much of days long gone by and-" he made a face and shut up. Quiet, in a fashion as if he had something to hide. Well, he wasn't one to pry.

"Aye, that's the cost of the Weirwood rites, isn't it? Visions and dreams all abound as I am given to understand. I'd be careful indulging in those things if I were you". Ebbert reached for the parchments before he gave him a look. "Leave them. I'll look them over a few more times before I take my rest. And don't set yourself at a pin's fee, friend. You're wary and 'reft of sleep. Otherwise you'd be much shrewder than me. Former Maester and all".

"It is kind of you to say that" Ebbert inclined his head and gave him a small smile. "'Friend'. First time you've ever called me that. First time anyone's ever called me a friend in quite a long time".

"An honest mistake" Jon shot him a wink and took him by the shoulder, showing him out of the tent. "If you're bitter cold tonight you should have a woman warm your bed. Or man – I shan't judge. Cold is cold, and warmth is warmth". He saw how the former Maester blushed and chuckled aloud as they left the tent for the inner recesses of the camp beyond. The night wind was brisk and strong against their faces, and to the north lay Castle Red Lake and its walls. "But I suppose with the Citadel and the chains and all you've not been much around girls. Cursed oaths of celibacy, a pox on the world worse than pox! Now, what you want to do is-" he saw the guise that came over Ebbert's stare and let up with a smile. "Tomorrow, then. Now off with you. To bed!"

"Aye" Ebbert nodded and straggled away towards his tent, one amongst the many at the centre of the camp where the honour guard of Robb's army kept their rest. Each rider in the guard were allowed a few attendants from their own holdings, to keep their arms and armour and set their tent and horses for them, and Jon, Smalljon as they all called him on account of his father, had five of them, sitting around a campfire built between his and their tents. All good people from the Shadow, that Umber lands, and he was fairly certain that one of them, Boren, was at least half a clansman on account of how bloody dull he was. Not too dumb, just dull. Utterly bloody unspirited as a clansman was wont to be, given that the fuckers did nothing but tend their mines and their sheep, day in and day out in perpetuity.

The rest were not so bad, he thought as he went to the fire and gathered them up for a sip or a dozen from the barrel of stout he had bartered from a Condon man. Even Boren was good enough with the greatsword to be useful in the fray. Fand was a thoughtful sort, equally as tedious to be around as Boren without having the excuse of being as thick as a Bear Island man's skull, while Darran was quiet most of the time when he wasn't fondling his chain-hammer and Cass was – _let's be honest here_ – a massive cunt. The only one of them who was any honestly good company was Mye Cranmer, their captain, the best bloody spearwoman in all of Father's army.

"So what were you all aflame about?" he wondered as he gathered them in his tent in a gathering of chairs and stools, cups and mugs in all their hands. "You all were talking loudly 'bout something. What was it?" He kept his eyes on Mye over the rim of his cup, on that woman whom he had learned the sword and riding with, the woman with the bright golden braids and the fierce dark eyes that had always been more of a sister to him than his own, especially that brat Rowra. Well, been a sister to him until he had gone to become a man. By then, though, he was equally a friend with the boring sodding clansman that had become her husband.

"There was this matter we were thinking on" Cass began slowly, as if taking a mummer's bloody pause, gesticulating wildly with his cup. "We'd actually sought your opinion, m'Lord. What-?"

"So, what do you think?" Mye asked, seemingly eager. "We've been betting on it, so we have. Now -there's a few different ways it can go". Oh, what by the blasted ancestors were they on about now? "I'd personally go with the Wylla woman. I heard that Lord Ned said she was 'is mother himself. Harwyn heard it, so he did, when he and the Usurper were out hunting. Wylla, a wetnurse at Starfall. Boren says it's just some odd Smallfolk lass from the South, that the Lord Ned forgot his honour in a weak moment with some baker's daughter or fisherwoman. Cass says it's Ashara Dayne, on account of him being besotted with her as a young-"

Jon couldn't help but scoff at the lot of them and drink deeply of his stout. "You lot honestly bet on whom I think mothered Lord Jon Stark?" Lord Snow, more like. He acquitted himself well enough, he supposed – but he was loath to trust the man until he had proven himself more thoroughly, Golden Tooth be damned. "I can't be arsed, honestly, and what does it matter either way?"

"Of course it matters!" Mye gasped aloud in protest, obviously taking some manner of offence that she shouldn't have. "It's his ma, isn't she? We'd all like to bloody know. Fand, Fand's got a good one. Tell Smalljon, will you Fand?"

"I propose that Lord Ned isn't Jon's da at all – or, rather, was" Fand began to drone, the boring sort of man whose friends had permanently glazed-over eyes from merely being in his company. "I'd say that his Lordship was too honourable for even that. And that he lied about Lord Jon being his. And I'd say that the only one Lord Ned would lie for would be a member of his family that had been dishonoured and despoiled. Whose name would be besmirched otherwise".

"Where-?" Jon asked his sworn sword before he stopped in the middle of his query and thought hard on it. Very hard on it. And something occurred to him. "Are you bloody suggesting-?" he began to ask as he rose from his chair and towered over them. The mere suggestion would be enough to send anyone into a rage.

"It's common knowledge here in the South that Prince Rhaegar was sweet on Lady Lyanna" Fand hurried to explain as the berserker started to come out in the young Umber. "Amongst the gentry, anyway. He stole her away for a reason. I say they eloped, wed in secret in the Targaryen fashion, and fled to the Tower of Joy, just like everyone else says. Is it that much of a breaking of reason to suggest that she bore him a son there, a child Lord Ned named his own for the sake of kinship and his blessed Lady sister?"

"You are saying that Lord Jon is the son of Lady Lyanna and Rhaegar fucking Targaryen?!" That was when they all came to know that they had overstepped. Grossly. They knew it further when Smalljon Umber stepped forth and drove his fist into Fand's face with enough force to throw him off the chair and to the ground beyond it. "Is that what you say?!"

"My Lord!" Mye and the others jumped to their feet and raised their hands, urging caution in him with staying motions and calming words of apology. "We beg your pardon! We wouldn't-!"

"Up with you". He walked forth and pulled Fand to his feet, taking the man by his bleeding cheek with one hand and by the shoulder with the other. "That'll be enough of such accursed slander from out of you. Those words could have cost you your head elsewhere. I'm merciful enough to leave it at this". He turned his head and looked to the rest of them before he shoved Fand their way, the companions catching him with tender hands. "You view history thus, you lot. I view it otherly:

"I say that Rhaegar Targaryen stole a young girl away to a land she had never known for his own rabid reasons, away from her home, away from her family, away from all her friends and everything she had ever known. I say he raped her, again and again, as his kin murdered her brother and had her Lord father burned alive. I say that the dragonspawn killed her with his poison seed, or that his Kingsguard wardens slit her throat when she tried to escape him". He stopped, looking each of them in the eye in turn. "That is what I think happened. Speak never of this again. Not to me, each other or anyone else".

They all nodded, Mye doing so the slowest but doing so yet the same, and when they all seemed to be in accord he took their cups to refill along with his own. They didn't speak between themselves, though the looks they gave each other spoke volumes. Thus he decided to nip this foolishness in the bud, once and for all.

"It doesn't matter who Lord Jon's mother is" he told them as he doled out the cups and had them all sit back down again. "Not to us, and not in the eyes of the law. Or even if he's someone else's son on all accounts, even Lord Ned's. His Grace, the King in the North, legitimised him as his brother and heir either way. In such relation his blood doesn't matter, only his name does. No matter his blood – he's Northern, and he's a Stark. The Direwolf would not cleave to him otherwise. He might be anyone's son by blood: Lord Ned's, Lady Lyanna's, their brother Brandon's, Wylla the wench's or that of an Other even. But his name is Stark. That means that we'll die for him. The North Remembers!"

"The North Remembers" they repeated the personal proverb of Robb Stark after him and drained their mugs as one, even Fand. There were no hard feelings between the two, no sentiments of ill-will. Sometimes Jon raged. It was in a berserker's nature and his training. In the Umber lands this was accepted. And after one more cup each they all went to leave. Everyone except for Mye.

"Get your rest, captain" he told her as he made to pour over the diagrams and drawings and schematics provided by the Citadel through Willas Tyrell as she went to set all the cups aside. "I'll take those. Someone can-"

"I'll have Fand wash the mugs and dishes on the morrow" she told him as she piled it all on the stand in the corner, the one beside his armour and where his axe and mace were leant. "A little more lashing won't set him wrong. Pardons, Smalljon. I should have known not to have him bring it up, since your Lord father's views on the histories-"

"My father, who once thought to take a woman by force but realised the monstrousness of that act?" He smirked down at the papers before him, the expression morphing into a sad smile on my lips. "Mother told me once, how scared she was when first she saw my father. Standing in the doorway of the ruined mill they had taken shelter in from the storm. She thought he was giant. She, who had befriended actual giants. She'd tell me about them. About the creature upon our coat of arms. How few there were left in the world. No real giants-"

Her hand fell upon his upper arm and silenced him with a look. "Stop waxing so bloody poetic, m'Lord Umber". He made to correct her, but she scoffed and shook her head. "Aye, I ken, thine father's the sodding Lord, but you'll be Lord one day. A good one, too. One of the best. And that means to not wallow in your own remembrances".

He chuckled and shook his head. It was almost amusing, so it was. "Who can truly say what it means to be a good Lord? A good ruler?"

"Our King's one, isn't he?" she asked as if it was nothing, as if there was no doubt, no worries, no reason to drink one's nights away even though it was pathetic. "Isn't he?" she repeated when she saw the look on his face. "Isn't he? Come now, Umber, don't say that you are-?"

"Doubting?" he wondered, the smile gone from his face. "I am. Gods curse me, I am". She looked at him as if he had grown a second head, and so he sighed and explained. "'All Chains but One'. Though all other chains may break, all other oaths broken and all other men dead, the Shadow follows Winterfell. From the days of Hēhrfrast Umber and onto the end of time it shall be so. From the King-beyond-the-Wall they saved us, from the Wildling hordes. And in returned we chained our hearts to Winterfell". No matter what. "Forever". The words were whispered by his own voice in his mind.

Doubter. _Traitor_.

"How could he?" It was pathetic, wasn't it, to doubt over something so puny? "His family keeps the loyalty of my House, forever. By his deeds he earned our love. He let us lead, let us be his heralds, let us pillage his goldmines and ward his family. And what did he then? What did King Robbard do with all his power and all our swords?" He bared his teeth and slammed his fist into the table, the wood creaking almost to the point of splintering underneath his hand. "He submitted to the Queen of Thorns. I saw it. Cowered to her every whim, like a dog! All Chains but One! My ancestors would weep if they knew we made ourselves subjects to some harlot of the bloody South!" He forced his breath out through his teeth. "All Chains but One. We didn't swear that for this".

"Oh, stop with the bravado and the self-pitying, will you?" Mye, clever as she was, showed him not an inkling of sympathy or gave him an inch of pull. "You think you're the only Umber man to think thus? To ever think thus? See, I think whatshisname, Harkwarg?" Not quite right, but close enough to the name to not cause offense or confusion. "The Umber Lord during Torrhen? I think he thought the same, but he didn't turn traitor. He never went against his king".

"Go against him?" No. The mere thought was absurd. Worthy of a man who had lost his wits. "Never. I would never raise my arms against Robb. His name is Stark". He looked to her, and by his look her courage fell, the shame and rage pulling on his face until the corner of his lips twitched. "But he isn't at his senses. Not in his right mind. His love for the Tyrell girl drives him to madness. If he had to he'd set our freedom at a whore's fee and sell it to have her. It's not love. Its slavery. Shackles. Only the Gods know how they turned his mind to their will, but it's not of honest nature. It's not love".

"Maybe you're just seeing things" she suggested, and by all the Gods and Ancestors he hoped that it was so. "Sorcery's everywhere, if the sodding Weirwood-lickers are to be believed. That doesn't mean that, that the Tyrells put a love spell on him or something equally inane". Well, when she said it like that it truly did sound foolish, didn't it? Like a child's notion or the invention of a truly shoddy bard. "Maybe he's just a boy in love. He's young, and even the old are driven mad by love".

"It's not love. It's madness" he shook his head and breathed out hard. "Love is something that grows. It's a seat planted in our hearts. And with years and spring and sunlight it grows. Grows from friendship and-". Gods, he was saying too much, wasn't he? He pried his eyes away from hers and looked back down on the parchments. It was safer that way. "It's not that. It's not this".

"Is that what you believe?" There was something in her voice besides the accusation and the anger and the confusion. "Is that what all the whores and slatterns you take to your bed believe?" Hurt, hurt, as if his words had offended her. "Is that what Mychel told you?"

"No". And that was what had offended her, wasn't it? What had hurt her? Mychel, the damn clansman. "He told me he loved you, had loved you since he first saw your face". Bloody boring one, that daft man. But, like with most clansmen, fiercely good with the staff sling and the greatsword. "With a quarrel in gut, underneath a tree in the fucking Whispering Woods, all he could think of was you". Bloody ancestors, even when winning the War they were losing it. Losing the people that mattered in it. "He was a good man".

"And a good husband". She didn't say it with any joy in her voice more than slight, her mirth drowned in guilt for some reason. "The marriage was my father's notion, his and Mychel's uncle Brandell's. Even though I couldn't return his-" she paused, and he looked to her, see her having turned her eyes off of him, gazing out into the darkness beyond his tent with a strange and uncharacteristic wetness in her eyes. "It's not important. Being with him was a good thing. Love is a good thing".

"Can you say that truthfully, given how he's traded his own brother's standing for a woman and a couple of wagons of fucking barley?" Like the North was something to be bartered away like a cask of stout. Like their freedom was. Like their sovereignty was. "Defies the point. He's not in love with her. He's a slave to her. To them. Shackled to them, by sorcery or love or madness, and all chains break. All chains but one".

"So" she swallowed and began her question again when the silence got the better of her. "What will you do about this supposed madness?"

"I'm his spymaster. I'll listen. I'll watch. I'll watch them all. If this madness goes on" he hated to say it, but he had to, he had to force it out because it was what he needed to do "if they keep ensnaring him in this madness" he bared his teeth and snarled like a beast, like a wolf, like a Direwolf. "I'll kill them. I'll kill them all".

"Ma always said that there's so few giants left in the world – but there are some. And we're as shrewd as we are strong" he told her as she watched him in silence, watching her back as the tears vanished from her eyes. "Low cunning, huh? I'll show those who would shackle us". The Tyrells, the Southrons, the Queen of Thorns, the Ironborn. He'd kill them all. "The Giant breaks all chains".

"All Chains but One".

* * *

END

* * *

 ** _A/N_** : … maybe with this chapter up and out I'll have courage enough to read the reviews I've gotten of late.

Anyway, I'm not quite happy with this chapter. Writing Balon Greyjoy as truly insane might be a little OOC – well, quite a bit OOC really – but the chapter took that turn and it was a joy to write. As for the Umber part of the chapter I also enjoyed. The Cersei one: not so much.

It's not that I dislike Cersei as a character. I do, but that's not the point. It's just that I can't seem to write her the way I truly want to without several chapters exclusively from her point of view to flesh out her particularly unique psychosis. Complicated and complex, most assuredly, and in a chapter such as this she comes across as nothing but a lusty drunkard and a truly awful person.

I'm going to take a break from writing this story for a while because of family reasons, reasons I don't want to expound upon, and to focus on my own original writing. I should be back to writing this story in a month or so.

Anyway, I hope that you've enjoyed this chapter. The best is yet to come.

Ta.


	17. First, My Fear

**A story ended before it's time**

* * *

I know it is tacky as all hell, but as wannabe-cultured and pretentious as I am I'd like to begin this announcement with a quote from one of my favourite Shakespearean plays:

 _First my fear; then my courtesy; last my_

 _speech. My fear is, your displeasure; my_

 _courtesy, my duty; and my speech, to beg_

 _your pardons._

This is an excerpt from the epilogue of King Henry IV Part II, a play I would wager most of you who speak English as a first language are at least somewhat familiar with, and these lines above are spoken by an unnamed Dancer, most likely played by Shakespeare himself. He goes on to state that he was recently in an "displeasing play", and he later apologises for the poor quality of the current performance, promising a better conclusion in the last two plays of Henriad: Richard III and Henry V (not in that order).

I am not Shakespeare, and this is not a play. This certainly isn't even "high literature". But in the same vein I would feel the same. I, too, fear the displeasure of you, my readers. I too, must announce my duty to you regardless. And lastly, I too would ask you to forgive me.

I will not continue on this story.

Due to the start of a very eventful school year and a close member of my family coming ill with cancer I had to take a break from this story. Since then I have practiced my own writing, thought little has come of it; also, I started learning three new languages, and utterly failed at caring for that sick family member. She is now dead, and after having spent some months mourning I thought to return to this story.

And yet, I cannot bring myself to. After having spent the last seven months at least partially present in a literature science class at one of Sweden's top universities I simply find this story too... let's just go with _shit._

I find the story too shit to finish. It is messy, confused, accidentally sexist, inconsistent in tone and unorganised in structure. My own raised standards will not allow me to complete this FanFiction in good conscience. Thus, this version of _**The Wolf that Kissed the Rose**_ dies here.

I do apologise for this, just as I apologise for not writing sooner. There is no excuse for a failing work-ethic, and I have failed all of you who would like to see this story finished. Still, I cannot be untrue to my own convictions. Without my demands on myself, I am nothing.

But I am not dead, and I am still a fan of Westeros and the Game of Thrones. This story might be dead - but as the Cthulhu-worshipping fantasy counterparts to my own culture state: what is dead may never die.

I am already working on a rebooted version of this story, with a title still in the works. Call it **_tWtKtR_** 2.0 for now. And this time I will endeavour to find one or more Beta-writers to light a fire under my proverbial arse and make sure I don't riddle the text with typos and donkey-ish grammar. The new story will revamp some story-lines, start at an earlier place in the canon, and retain many elements from the old story whilst scrapping some others. Overall, I hope it will make for a better finished product.

If you'd like to be part of that creative process, or just like to lend feedback to me of any sort (I fully expect threats and plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but I am hopeful for at least some happy few to make themselves known) do send me PM;s and tell me all about it. For now it's a "come one, come all"-type of situation.

The first chapter on the new story should be up by the end of this week. Hopefully it will be better than this one, making it so that I haven't been typing out of my arse for the duration of this post.

And so, with my sincerest apologies,

Ola / KaiserKou

 _The best is yet to come_


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